


celestial bodies

by irving



Series: Sunshine Series [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, oogfhhe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-22 19:24:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 60,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11974077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irving/pseuds/irving
Summary: a new companion, a couple lifetimes, a really big universe.





	1. the beginning, part 1.

**Author's Note:**

> this is ! a collection of old roleplays (i know, ew) i wrote when i was younger with a woman who i will keep anonymous. people have said they were well written, but idk. anyways, me and the girl have parted ways but i promised myself i would publish the SUNSHINE SERIES if we ever stopped being friends, so here i am. this is all old stuff, i doubt any new plots will be added. some things have been edited for clarity/cringe factor.
> 
> also, side note, the chapters are composed of 2 posts/chapter, one from the doctor's perspective, one from sunshine's. some may be longer because i chose to include more posts and vice versa. personal dialogue is bolded, and for clarity we included the other person's dialogue, which is in italics.

The Doctor happened to know quite a bit about how his ship was built - he made it his business; there were meant to be about seven or eight Time Lords piloting the old girl so he had to know what he was doing - but even if he didn't know anything at all, the harsh sound of metal screeching, the sight of sparks flying out from the central console and the smell of burning didn't exactly give the impression of good news. Over the sound of the TARDIS engines he could hear the droning of the ship behind him that was full of angry Daleks with stolen time traveller technology no doubt taken from an unlucky time agent. He had hoped to shrug them off by entering the time vortex - after all, not many species could time travel - but apparently this didn't do much good as the Daleks only kept up the pursuit and were now on his tail even more than they had been previously. The Time Lord darted around the machine like a madman as sparks flew all around him, pulling levers and pressing buttons and honking horns and occasionally grabbing onto one of the coral-like structures dotted around the control room as the TARDIS fell chaotically through the vortex and caught him off balance. With grim determination the Doctor held onto one coral structure whilst he stretched out with one arm to grab a lever before the TARDIS dramatically tilted the other way, leading him to collide head first with the main body of the console. As one hand brushed across his forehead he felt blood from a cut; grimacing and hanging on for dear life he snatched the monitor and peered at it with the desperate but focused attention of a man possessed. "They're still onto us!" he shouted, darting around the console again and jumping over one of the fires that had sprung up only to find that there was no reply. The Time Lord looked around, expecting to see the familiar, albeit probably terrified face of a companion -   
  
There was no one. Just him, talking to himself, alone in the control room with, for once, no companion. For a moment or so as the TARDIS began to steady he looked around, lost, until a boom from the stolen ship came to his attention and he ducked just in time as another fire started in another area of the control room and the doors of the TARDIS flew open. Through the thin mists of the time vortex the Doctor glimpsed rolling landscapes and seas before he grabbed onto another coral structure, wrapping his arms around it and clinging on as the wind threatened to throw him out. It did more than that - he watched with wide eyes as various odds and ends flew out of the door heading off to the rest of the ship including what looked to be a set of original '50s bathing costumes, a grandfather clock from 16th century France and a collection of rather familiar rubber ducks." **No!** " he shouted, reaching one arm out in vain for the ducks as they flew out into the time winds to later batter Amelia Earhart's plane and choke the River Delaware. As the last rubber duck made it's exit the Doctor had no choice but to cling onto the coral structure again as his ship rocked and swooned and lurched from side to side.   
  
The flight from the Daleks appeared to take forever but, in fact, it hadn't taken long at all. After a few minutes the Daleks began to get fed up of the chase - they were getting tired and sent their quarry a little something to remember them by in the form of the offerings from a cannon. The Doctor heard it coming and dived for cover, crouching down near one of the coral decorations as more sparks emerged from the central console and as the air became thick with smoke. The blast sent the TARDIS sprawling out of the time vortex, shaking the control room and, by extension, the last Time Lord who was being rocked about within; the light coming from outside the TARDIS doors changed from the reds and blues of the time vortex to sunlight as the blue box tumbled through the atmosphere of whichever planet he had emerged on, nosediving towards the planet's surface at a furious speed as the momentum of the blast carried it through the skies and right down to the surface below - the ship landed with a crash and the screech (and a worrying crunch) of metal, the impact of which severely jarring the Doctor and sending him sprawling. The TARDIS was finally still and the only sounds to be heard were the fires which were gently blazing in the background. And the sounds of groaning as, dazed, he dragged himself to the TARDIS' doors and pushed them open, breathing heavily as smoke erupted from the interior and obscured his view of wherever he had landed. 

* * *

Sunshine was tired. Of course, Sunshine happened to be tired a lot of the time - schoolteachers, she had learned, were usually tired. Up grading papers at night, up making plans for the day in the morning. In her memory, she had slept about maybe six hours in the past week, seeing as it was finally Friday. Despite the fact that her work technically wasn't over on Friday, she still looked forward to it with almost childlike excitement. Saturday, was, in fact, the best day of the week for her, as it meant she got to relax. The students had left the building long before her, probably around two or three hours now, seeing as the time was nearly six o' clock in the evening, so her classroom was empty and quiet as she slung her bag over her shoulder, sliding the stack of papers onto the pile on her desk. Unlike most of her teacher counterparts, Sun was fairly organized when it came to her desk - it annoyed her quite a bit if any place in her room was unorganized, whether at home or work. Since beginning work as a teacher, she had taken it upon herself to tip out overly-messy desks. As a matter of fact, that was her final teaching task at the school for the day, and it was what she was doing now.

Was Sunshine a strict teacher? Absolutely, and most of her students would agree with her. Probably some fellow teachers or co-workers, too. Messes and purposeful mistakes would not be tolerated, she thought to herself as she righted the desk whose contents she had dumped on the ground. She stopped after a few moments, holding the desk ever-so slightly in the air as she looked over her shoulder.

What was that sound, she thought to herself as it faded. It had sounded rather like incredibly bad violin playing, she thought once more as she gently set the desk down, her eyebrows still knitted together and mouth in a tight frown. It must have been her imagination, she decided. After all, nobody that she was aware of in the school played the violin, and certainly nobody she knew of played it so it would produce a sound that horrific.

The classroom had returned to the peaceful quiet she enjoyed, illuminating both her figure and the desks in the milky golden light of the almost-setting sun. This was Sun's favorite time - it was quiet and peaceful and everything looked like the fairy tales she had so often been told as a child. Sunshine much preferred the early evening to any other time of day, especially in a brightly lit city. She liked the time of day when the sun still filtered through her window but she could still see the stars. Brushing away her thoughts of the idyllic classroom scene and her time preference, Sunshine clicked off the lights, slipped out of the room, closed the door and locked it. Giving a small sigh of relief, Sunshine began to walk through the familiar halls, still watching the pale golden light filter through the half-slitted shades of the hallway windows. Finally stepping out of the school, Sunshine rounded the corner of the school, keeping her head down until she got to her car, in which case she lifted her head because she smelled....smoke.

The sight that she was greeted with surprised her.

There was a box, was the first thought that registered in her brain, on my car. This thought was spoken a few moments after it registered, though it came across more panicky and surprised than in her head.

" **My CAR!** " she screamed, letting the messenger bag slip off her shoulder.

" **What the hell happened to my car?** " she screamed again, circling around to the back of the car so she was facing the doors of the blue police box. Sunshine had been trained from a young age to collect herself and correct any problem that arose, so after a few seconds of screaming and staring, Sunshine took a deep breath and gingerly stepped onto what remained of the trunk of the car, which was thankfully enough to hold her within arm's reach of the police box. Chances were, judging by the way the box was position, it must have crashed. And if it crashed, it had to come from up high. Of course, the instinctual side of her immediately said 'aliens,' but the logical side of her counterpointed with the fact that there was no such thing as aliens, and if there was, they wouldn't fly a police box. But if it was aliens...chances were they were still inside. Sunshine always carried a Swiss army knife that she kept taped to the inside of her shoe, just in case, so she shuffled towards the police box as she removed the knife. Hesitating slightly outside the door, she considered what to do next. Does one knock on a police box, she asked herself as she hesitated. Of course, the issue of knocking was not her real concern. What if when she. knocked, something came out? She certainly didn't want to get hurt doing this. However, unbeknownst to Sun, she had hesitated long enough to allow the Doctor time to drag himself out of the box. Sun gave a small scream of surprise as this happened - it happened quickly and it certainly startled her a lot. Waving the smoke away from her face as she attempted to calm herself down internally, Sunshine squinted at the man who had dragged himself out of the smoke-filled box. He looked....human. An aubductee, the logical and instinctual sides of her agreed as she stared at him in silence before speaking again, setting her face into the strict teacher-face she had learned how to make over the four years she had been teaching.

" **Why are you on what remains of my car? Who are you? What is..that?** " She asked, using the voice she used to scold misbehaving children, even though she appeared to be speaking to an adult man. She paused slightly, and expression of concern briefly crossing her face. " **Are you okay?** "

 


	2. the beginning, part 2.

The Doctor was coughing heavily, waving his hand weakly to try and rid himself of the smoke. He had made it out of the control room but he was still uncomfortably hot from the fires going on inside, he was bleeding at the forehead and his clothes were ripped and singed in places. Smoke was still coming out of the control room, staining the shades of red and gold that were streaked against the evening sky. For a moment he just crouched there, his hands gripping onto the side of the TARDIS as he half hung out, gasping for air and recovering from the nightmare flight. His brown eyes stared down at the twisted mass of metal under his ship. Low carbon metal, he thought vaguely to himself. Car. Earth, or somewhere like it. To be quite frank he didn't really care at this point in time - he was just happy to be out of the time vortex and away from the Daleks. It was a miracle that the TARDIS had merely toppled to the surface of whatever Earth-like planet he was on and hadn't exploded on impact; if it had been a lesser ship he had been piloting that probably would have happened. The Time Lord let these thoughts go by him as he recovered, stealing a glance back to the central control room. It'll repair itself, in time, he thought, although he knew the truth more than anyone else - that it would take several days if he was lucky, perhaps up to a week if he wasn't. He was stranded. Stranded and not in the best state. Not enough to regenerate, thankfully - that was something; he liked this face - and thanks to being a Time Lord, which did give several physical perks, he hadn't blacked out, but he was sore and aching a bit from being flung about whilst the TARDIS had been in flight.  
  
And that, apparently, was not his only problem. Someone had seen him. Brilliant. Still breathing heavily the Doctor glanced up at the small scream that he had heard to find himself looking at a woman who was squinting at him in a rather suspicious manner, or so it seemed to him. How long had she been there? Had she seen the whole thing? It was hard to judge - it had taken some time for the Doctor to navigate his way out of the control room given that some of the wires from up above had come down and fires were still burning and various bits and bobs from deeper within the TARDIS had, much like the rubber duck collection and the other odds and ends, had found their way to the control room and had been blocking the way. She could have seen the whole thing or called the police or done anything. How was he to explain that? All of that came thick and fast to the Doctor as he looked up at the woman, whose facial features were arranged in such a way that dragged him back 800 years to when he had been a kid at the Academy. Silence. For a moment or two the Doctor didn't even speak, just hanging out of the TARDIS. Well, a voice said inside his head,At least it's Earth.  
  
" **This isn't what it looks like,** " he finally wheezed. Unfortunately, however, he and the woman had begun to talk at the same time, so all he heard was a whole boatload of questions directed his way. And then a further one: " _Are you okay?_ " The Doctor looked up at the woman. "I," he started, before his gaze moved to the TARDIS, still emitting smoke. "The excuse of 'a crane dropped me here and then shoved off and left me here' isn't going to work, is it?" Without giving the woman a chance to reply he replied to himself. " **No, not really. I just...** " He trailed off and grimaced. " **I'm alright, yes. Just fine, thanks.** " He grinned at the woman in a way that was designed to look like he was on top of things. Considering he was talking to a teacher perhaps it hadn't been the best move. The Time Lord tried to get out of the TARDIS, hoisting himself over the wood and landing on the pavement next to her - except it wasn't as graceful. He stumbled a bit, leaning against his ship for support in a bid to remain upright. It was then that something that he had vaguely heard earlier came to mind and, slowly, realization came into his eyes. He glanced towards the mangled mess of car under the TARDIS. " **Oh. Is that..is that your car, under there?** " 

* * *

Sunshine stared at him for a few moments as he talked, raising her eyebrows and slowly shaking her head at his question of the crane excuse. No, of course that wasn't going to work, he had even said it himself. Police boxes didn't just get dropped places, and they certainly didn't just get dropped on someone's car. Nor did they expel smoke from their interiors, and nor did they often contain what looked like a human being, but Sunshine wasn't sure. The box had crashed and he had been in it when it happened, so chances were he either was an aubductee or he... or he wasn't human. By logic, it had to be one of those two options, as far as Sunshine could see. She gave a small sigh at his insistence of being okay - she had seen enough kids who had gotten beaten up to know when someone was lying about their physical or mental health.

" **You're bleeding,** " Sunshine stated matter-of-factly, lowering the knife hand and gesturing to his forehead. Yes, it wasn't a bad cut, but chances were that he might be bleeding under the jacket he was wearing, and she could already tell he was going to bruise in some places. Sunshine, in addition to being a schoolteacher, had been a temporary school nurse during her college years, to see if she took a fancy to it. Over the course of being an assistant nurse for three months, she had gotten the hang of telling how bad injuries were, or at least an approximation of how bad they would be, and though this man didn't seem to be incredibly hurt, he may have injuries that she couldn't see at the moment. Gently shaking her head to remind herself to stay on task, she took a cautious step towards him before the man spoke again, this time about her car. Slowly turning her head to look at what mangled and twisted mess remained of her car, Sunshine gave a breathy laugh, still shaky with surprise and adrenaline.

" **Yeah. Yeah, I don't think my insurance covers being crushed by a police box, huh?** " she murmured weakly, furrowing her eyebrows. She had entered that state of nervous denial where you just shakily laugh a lot because you can't believe what is happening is actually happening. Due to this, she gave another breathy laugh and straightened her back. " **Alright, what is....w-what's happening here? Am I asleep and this is a horrible nightmare, or did a police box really just crush my car? Who are you, anyway?** " Sunshine asked, the shaky, breathy quality of her voice fading to be replaced by slight confusion and doubt. Pausing for a few moments after she spoke, she gently offered her knife-less hand out for him to shake. " **I'm Sunshine Emims. Miss Emims,** " she said softly, raising her eyebrows as she spoke.

Sunshine had decided - she would go about this situation in the only way she knew how - treating a student. Ask what happened and deal with the response effectively as she made sure he wasn't hurt and that if he was hurt, treating his wounds. She had done it a thousand times, both as a nurse and as a teacher. Students occasionally got in fights in her class, and she often had to treat the wounds they inflicted upon one another. Why would this be any different? Well, aside from the fact that he was a grown man and he had just crushed her car with a police box, and of course the fact that neither of them were in school at the moment. Despite this, she would still use the method she had developed and learned worked pretty well. Biting her lower lip, she frowned at him once more.

" **Are you injured anywhere else aside from your forehead? What happened? Aside from..crushing my car, that is.** " She said suddenly, straightening her back once more. Sunshine had a habit of slumping her shoulders or caving inwards when she was nervous or thinking, but usually remedied it once she realized she was doing it.

 


	3. the beginning, part 3.

Well, this would take some explaining. Perhaps it was the shock of the TARDIS landing but the Doctor had only just noticed that this woman, who had been staring at him as he had talked, was holding a knife in her hand. He eyed it suspiciously until she eventually lowered it to gesture at his forehead. Mirroring her movements he lightly touched the cut, coming away with droplets of blood on his fingertips. " **It's nothing,** " he said, shrugging, his words distracted at best. His eyes were looking both at the woman who had approached him (and most importantly the knife she was holding) and behind her, at his surroundings - he admittedly wasn't paying much attention to her, only enough to distinguish that she wasn't one of the Dalek puppets. She was too genuine for that and, among other things, she probably would have killed him by now anyway. The knife he was a bit unsure of, mind you, but human beings were trigger-happy (or blade-happy) when scared; it was a natural reaction, the Time Lord supposed, to having your car being crushed by a police box. She had already lowered it and so his gaze quickly moved behind her, trying to work out where he was. A school - which must mean that she was a teacher. He could taste by the air itself that it was 2015 and her accent was enough to prove his hypothesis that it was Earth and not any other planet....  
  
The woman took a step towards him then and the Doctor's brown eyes watched her. " **Yeah,** " she replied to his earlier question about her car. " _Yeah, I don't think my insurance covers being crushed by a police box, huh?_ " She laughed nervously and despite his aches and pains the Doctor joined in with a laugh of his own. " **No, don't expect it does. I'll, er,** " he added, glancing at her, " **Pay for the damage.** " Of course, he didn't have a bank account nor carried around money, but if he used the sonic screwdriver (which had managed to get through the ordeal unscathed due to being tucked into his trench coat) on an ATM he could withdraw some money to pay for the car if that was what she wanted. The woman went on then, asking who he was and if she was dreaming before following up with offering her name. Sunshine. A gentle name for a rather softly spoken woman; it suited her, or so he thought vaguely. He was busy trying to work out if the Daleks would have another go at trying to finish him off; if they were, then he had to get going as soon as possible. " **Not a nightmare I'm afraid. I'm the Doctor - nice to meet you, Sunshine.** " He gave her a grin, albeit a slightly pained one. The Time Lord had the cut on his forehead and various aches and pains to contend with - though, on the plus side, he had noted the day he had regenerated that there was a slight weakness in the dorsal tubercle with this body and thankfully that hadn't been harmed - and the problem of the Daleks. Surely they wouldn't have given up so easily.  
  
" _Are you injured anywhere else aside from your forehead? What happened? Aside from..crushing my car, that is._ " Internally the Doctor resisted the urge to grin at the quick fire questions. Human beings. Give them a puzzle and, like a dog with it's jaws clamped on a bone, however much you tried to tell them everything was alright they still wanted to know everything. It was very infuriating at times but yet it was part of the reason why he loved them so much. The urge to discover, to solve, was practically written in their DNA. " **Not anywhere else I don't think,** " he replied, one hand ruffling his hair. His cut was fairly bad and would probably need treating but it wasn't life threatening, nor was it going to interfere much with his general health. " **Should be fine with a good dose of tannin.** " Her question about what had happened, however, made him stall. " **I, I,** " he said, trying to think of something. This Sunshine Emims already thought he was as bonkers as a Christmas fruitcake store and he couldn't think of any reasonable excuses that didn't involve aliens and time/space travel. She had her knife down for the moment but he didn't want to give her any further shocks in case she decided she wanted to use it on someone she classified as a probably dangerous nutcase. It was understandable although the Doctor did wish that his favourite species wasn't quite so ready to attack at any opportunity; it didn't help his job any. " **Can't remember,** " he said finally. " **Must've hit my head. Can't remember a thing. I don't even know,** " he said, his words harbouring an element of truth, " **Where I am.** "

 

* * *

 

" _It's nothing._ " Sunshine raised her eyebrows in a manner that clearly displayed she didn't believe him.

" **Sure you are. You are not bleeding at all and your suit isn't torn horribly. And I most certainly do not see a few small cuts on your arms and there is definetly NOT going to be a bruise on your jawbone. Yep, you're...you're clearly fine, my mistake.** " She said, quickly adopting her usual icy demeanor, which she was using here mostly because she didn't know who he was. Sunshine didn't trust anyone she didn't know, and she certainly didn't trust someone she didn't know who had crushed her car with a police box.

At his offer to pay for the damage, Sun shook her head insistently. " **No. No, I'll be fine, don't worry,** " Sunshine said quickly, waving her hands in a dismissive motion as she spoke. Sunshine never accepted help this way - she was much too proud and much too self-respecting to do that. She gently zipped open her jacket, reaching on the inner folds until she found the inner pocket, dropping the Swiss army knife inside. " **Not a nightmare, huh? Alright. I can live with that, I guess. I've certainly had worse than just a crushed car.. Hit by a car at age seven, and I'm still here.** " Sunshine paused, looking up and zipping her jacket once more. After all, it was nearly September, and it was a bit chilly to have her jacket unzipped. " **Nice to meet you too, 'the Doctor.' What kind of doctor are you? Doctor...who, exactly?** " Sunshine asked, raising an eyebrow.

" _Should be fine with a good dose of tannin._ " Sunshine couldn't help but snicker a little at his words. " **I'm afraid I don't have any plants, seeds, bark, wood, leaves and slash or fruit skins that are edible on me, nor do I have wine, because, in case you didn't notice before, this is a school. And even if it wasn't a school, I don't care much for wine, and I wouldn't have it on me. And I also wouldn't have any edible plants, seeds, bark, wood, leaves or fruit skins. Well, fruit skins maybe, but the point is...I don't think we have any tannin around here.** " Sunshine took a deep breath, having just used all of the other one to finish talking, which was a problem she had developed since she became a teacher. Forgetting to breathe was an upsetting habit, yes, but she had learned how to deal with it. At his comment about hitting his head, Sunshine widened her eyes and straitened her back. " **You're a liar, then, you said you were fine. You could have a concussion. Come on, the school isn't locked up yet and I can check you out in the nurse's office.** " Sunshine paused to let him speak, and brightened a little at his last words. She always loved informing people about where she lived, regardless of whether or not they wanted to hear what she was saying, mostly because she wanted them to know the school.

" **You are in Westminister. Near Soho, if you want to be exact. I work at this school. I teach the fifth grade. Nice group of kids, really, but I'm getting off topic. Come on, I want to make sure you don't have a concussion, and if you do, I need to make sure that it's not very severe. If it is severe, I can probably get you to a hospital.** " Sunshine hesitated - should she offer her hand? She didn't quite trust him yet, and even if she had, she didn't know if he trusted her. Besides, they had only met a few minutes ago, and only by way of him accidentally crushing her car. That reminded her - there was an important question she didn't ask.

" **What is the police box, if the crane didn't drop it? It crashed, so it came from up high.** " Sunshine asked suddenly, diverting the conversation quite abruptly to something completely different. She really wanted a logical answer for this one - aliens was something that had always scared her as a child, and even as a twenty-six year old and she knew aliens were real - the universe was infinite and infinitely growing, after all, and logic said that if the universe was infinite, there had to be at least one other life form out there as advanced as humans, if not more so - but she certainly never imagined them coming to Earth, the planet which humans had practically destroyed and polluted. Therefore, as long as he gave a sensible answer, or at least something remotely believable, she would be satisfied. As long as he didn't say 'a spaceship,' or anything like that, that is.

 


	4. the beginning, part 4.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at this point we gave up on adding bolded dialogue so ill just italicize stuff for clarity's sake

It looked like he'd have to get more acting lessons from Marilyn Monroe at some point as this Sunshine didn't believe him one bit apparently, raising her eyebrows skeptically at his insistence that he was alright and relatively unscathed. " _Sure you are,_ " she said sarcastically. Her voice had an icy touch to it. " _You are not bleeding at all and your suit isn't torn horribly. And I most certainly do not see a few small cuts on your arms and there is definitely NOT going to be a bruise on your jawbone. Yep, you're...you're clearly fine, my mistake._ " She wasn't quite as gentle as before and the Doctor gave her a look, although one not totally devoid of a light humour. "No need to be like that, Sunshine," he said genially, giving her a smile to try and ease her rather suspicious tones. "Can't say you've lived without a few scratches here and there - I should know." He had died eight or nine times so it was safe to say that he knew the most about dying and getting injuries out of the two of them; it was an occupational hazard whilst going around and saving the universe on a daily basis and crashing a TARDIS as well. A bruised jawbone was the least of it really, although he did admittedly run a finger across his jawline and winced a little at what he found there. "Ow," he muttered.  
  
Sunshine was fine with her car, apparently. "Suit yourself," he replied with a shrug, his eyes carefully following her movements as she tucked away the Swiss army knife. "That's more like it. No knives, thanks." A good stab and anyone would be finished off, most of all him, already battered as he was. Somehow he thought he'd be able to explain away most things but a sudden impromptu regeneration, right in front of her before her very eyes in a public place...well, then that would add to his problems. It was the quickest way he could think of to be apprehended by UNIT who would doubtless want to know what was going on and why the local neighbourhood's friendly Time Lord was having a facelift in front of a civilian, no less." _Not a nightmare, huh? Alright. I can live with that, I guess. I've certainly had worse than just a crushed car.. hit by a car at age seven, and I'm still here._ " "And long may that continue," the Doctor replied, his eyes darting towards the smoke that was still rising out of the TARDIS. It wasn't as thick as before; he had invested in some fire prevention technology only a few weeks ago and it must've kicked in by now. Well, he said "fire prevention technology" - that was a fancy word for sprinkler-like apparatus. Even 'sprinkler-like' was a bit too fancy a name, given that they were, in fact, sprinklers of the kind often seen in Earth kitchens. Sprinklers from Homebase, actually, that he had modified and wired into the TARDIS. The Time Lord had hoped that he wouldn't have to use them, but given his lifestyle fires were bound to pop up as they indeed had done moments ago; he was thankful for them considering they were an investment that had saved the TARDIS from becoming a charred shell today.   
  
The inevitable question had finally come his way - what kind of doctor he was and why he didn't go by a surname. His brown eyes moved back to Sunshine. "Just 'the Doctor'," he said brightly. "No more and no less than that." Secretly there was a part of him that wanted to find an alien to defeat that he could use his PhD in cheese making against, but alas no alien being or organisation that he had encountered had ever had a weakness towards cheese. Still, it came in handy when cooking, on the rare occasions that he did indeed cook. His PhD in medicine was far more practical. He was distracted from his thoughts as Sunshine snickered. "Something I said?" he asked her, before she spoke about how she didn't have any plants, seeds, bark, wood, leaves or fruit skins or, indeed, wine on her person. "And even if it wasn't a school," she said breathlessly as the Doctor watched, amused, "I don't care much for wine, and I wouldn't have it on me. And I also wouldn't have any edible plants, seeds, bark, wood, leaves or fruit skins. Well, fruit skins maybe, but the point is...I don't think we have any tannin around here," she finished, taking a deep breath. After a second or two the Doctor spoke. "Well," he said, elongating the 'l', "I was thinking more along the lines of tea. Though if you did have any edible plants, seeds, bark, wood, leaves or fruit skins, then they wouldn't go amiss." A smile teased the corners of his mouth. He liked Sunshine.  
  
" _You're a liar, then, you said you were fine. You could have a concussion. Come on, the school isn't locked up yet and I can check you out in the nurse's office._ " The Doctor had thought that the excuse of possible concussion would have laid her off his case but, apparently, she was keen to help him regardless of the fact that he had just fallen out of the sky with a blue box and was a complete and utter stranger to her. "You don't need to," he replied, shaking his head, but he felt as though he was going to be carted off to the nurse's office anyway. This Sunshine was a teacher if this was a school and most teachers didn't take no as an answer towards these things, after all. " _You are in Westminister. Near Soho, if you want to be exact. I work at this school. I teach the fifth grade. Nice group of kids, really, but I'm getting off topic. Come on, I want to make sure you don't have a concussion, and if you do, I need to make sure that it's not very severe. If it is severe, I can probably get you to a hospital._ " She spoke relatively quickly from the Doctor's perspective though he gave a thoughtful nod. Westminster. If the TARDIS was going to be out of order for a while he'd have to find somewhere to live for a bit....he knew a few places he could go if need be. "Thanks," he muttered absentmindedly as she went on, talking about how she was a teacher and taught some of the children here before saying that she was going off topic and she had to check he didn't have concussion. She followed it up with a sudden question about what the TARDIS actually was and the manner she had about her made the Doctor wonder if she had been trying to catch him off guard. "I don't remember," he said. "Concussion, remember? Where's this nurse's office?"He figured it would probably be best to go along with the pretence for as long as he had to before giving Sunshine the slip and going back to the TARDIS. He could make a few temporary fixes just to get her away somewhere secluded and then he could try and see what he could do about fixing her. Despite this plan, however, he found himself warming to Sunshine, and she was obviously an intelligent woman. 

* * *

" _No need to be like that, Sun._ "

Sunshine was highly affronted by this comment, even if it was meant to be an innocent remark. All her life, even from a young age, she had been told to quiet her loud nature, sugarcoat her sarcastic and abrasive nature, and to this day, she HATED being told that she was being unkind or sarcastic. Even the simple comment the Doctor had made offended her and brought up unpleasant childhood memories of being scolded for speaking out at dinner or calling out in class, or even making a snide remark to her twin brother. Her family had been the 'only speak when spoken to,' 'respect your elders,' 'grow up to be a good wife' kind of family, and though Sunshine loved her family, she also detested their moral and family values. It wasn't a traumatic or upsetting thing to be called out on being loud or rude, it just stirred up a deep-set annoyance and anger she had been harboring since she was a little girl.

"No need to say you're fine when you're not. Don't call me Sunshine, by the way. It's Sunshine or Miss Emims." She retorted, crossing her arms over her chest. The name Sun didn't bother her - not much, but she did find the name to lead people to believe she was sweet and innocent, which annoyed her quite a bit. "I wasn't planning on stabbing you. I would have done it already if I was going to. I think you would be suspicious, too, if a police box mysteriously landed on your car and then a strange man in a torn-up suit crawled out." Sunshine remarked, raising an eyebrow as a small smile crossed her lips. "I'm sure it will. Schoolteacher isn't exactly a risk filled-job, is it?" Sunshine gave a silent, breathy chuckle, adjusting her jacket as she finished speaking. "Now, tea, I might be able to do. Not sure, but we may have some tea...somewhere. I'm sure the break room has some form of tea in it, if it comes to raiding that." Sunshine murmured softly, looking down at her shoes as she tried to think. Her thoughts were interrupted as the Doctor began speaking again, this time saying that he was just 'the Doctor,' only 'the Doctor'. Huh. Was he just private about his name, or was his name really just 'the Doctor?' Cruel name, if it really was just that. She could sympathize. "You don't need to." Sunshine was pulled out of her thoughts once more as the Doctor spoke again. Sunshine waited until he had run through the rest of his talking before speaking again herself. "I most certainly do." She murmured before clapping her hands together and rubbing them together. "Don't remember. Okay. We can probably look inside after I make sure you're not mortally wounded. The nurse's office is in there, and you're going to have to come with me, because I have a key." Sunshine reached in her pockets and pulled out her keyring, which she noted now had one useless key on it. The key to her car. "Alright, then, 'just the Doctor.' Let's go....try to find some tea, then. And clean you up, make sure you're not hurt." Sunshine stuffed the keys back in her pocket and grinned.

 


	5. the beginning, part 5.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since writing this, i have discovered the word count will be around 125000 words. jesus christ

Sun appeared to be a little irritated when the Doctor called her out for her comment; she grumpily crossed her arms over her chest. " _No need to say you're fine when you're not,_ " she retorted crossly, before adding to not call her Sunshine and to call her only 'Sunshine' or 'Miss Emims'. "Sunshine, then," the Doctor said in reply, seeing that he had obviously hit a nerve of some type. This one was a curious mix - a mixture of gentle one minute and, when she saw that he wasn't too badly hurt after all, irritable and touchy the next. He could see that she'd be a good teacher to help keep children in line. She went on to say that she hadn't been planning on stabbing him and that he'd be suspicious, too, if a police box landed on his car."I think I'd be more than just suspicious," the Doctor muttered to himself. The TARDIS was his form of 'car' and if anything tried to smash it they'd have another thing coming. His ship was stronger than it looked, anyway; its weight alone would fracture the surface of the Earth if it was it's true weight and it would be larger than Gallifrey ever was if it's (currently minimised) size reflected it's true size. It didn't help, of course, that the Doctor kept adding on rooms for the sake of it - something told him that he didn't need seven squash courts - but he just didn't know where to stop with these things. The courts were sure to come in handy eventually if he ever picked up someone who had a love of squash - he had been thinking about building a simple robot or cannibalising one from the 51st century (they did like their robots there, especially clockwork ones) to play against him, actually, now there was a thought -   
  
Sun still wanted to help him, apparently, and he was moved out of his lull as she went on, still intent on getting him inside the building. The Doctor was surprised - given his strange name and strange behaviour and the fact that he had, as she herself said, crashed directly on top of her car, she still wanted to help him out with his fictional concussion. He was willing to go along with the pretence for a little while longer, although he had no intention to stay longer than he needed to; as soon as this Sunshine was happy that he was okay and could recover from his "concussion" he had to go back to the TARDIS and try and work out what to do next. One good thing was that the Daleks would probably have had no idea where in space and time he had crashed; they had been going so quickly it would have been hard to tell and he had more experience with riding the time winds than all of the Daleks put together. The most the Daleks knew about time travel was what they could glean from the crazed ramblings of the few Daleks that had fell through the time vortex at one time or another - they were just riding on stolen technology. This did give him time to get out of sight and out of mind, as long as he was able to move off before the TARDIS energy, which did linger around the ship and give off a trace, didn't congeal and become noticeable in the eyes of anyone who was searching for it. He had....a few days? Maybe a week if he was lucky. Considering he had been here, there and everywhere on Earth in almost every time period imaginable, maybe the residue TARDIS energy in so many lines and directions and trails would confuse the Daleks and buy him a bit of extra time - time to patch the TARDIS up and be on his way. For this reason he didn't persist as Sunshine told him that they could raid the 'break room' for tea if need be once they were in the school and that she wanted to make sure that he wasn't mortally wounded - they, or rather he, had time before all hell broke loose. "If I were mortally wounded then I think I wouldn't be standing here now," he said, his words having a certain element of truth to them, as he would have been doing anything but just standing here if he were, "But if you insist, Sun." He gestured with one hand towards the school. "Lead the way." As long as she didn't decide to get a stethoscope out to test his heartbeat or wanted to feel his pulse (or, rather, both of them), what could possibly go wrong? 

* * *

 

Sunshine gave a small nod as he used her full name. To be honest, she felt more respected when people used that name, or when they referred to her as 'Miss Emims.' However, the kids she taught called her 'Miss Sun,' and though that was an appropriate and respectful name, if any adult called her that, she would not hesitate to shoot them the dirtiest look she possibly could. Maybe step on their foot, if she was close enough. And as much as Sunshine loved her name, and prided herself on having a unique name, she still found it rather silly. As a child, she often sat in her room, thinking about how her parents must have named her wrong. Maybe they had been expecting a happy, soft, well-behaved girl sort of a child - they were hippies, after all. Instead, which Sunshine found a bit amusing, they got a sarcastic, smart-alec-know-it-all, rough-and-tumble girl who acted like she had been raised by wolves sometimes in her childhood.

Her parents loved her, yes, and she returned the feeling, but they almost never saw eye-to-eye on any issue, no matter how controversial it might be. The Doctor's quiet murmur suddenly pulled her away from her thoughts - after all, Sunshine had gotten quite adept at hearing even the quietest whispers of fifth-grade children, and Sunshine exerted this skill to every extent possible, whenever possible. "I heard that. I was a little more than suspicious. I did draw a knife on you. But you're hurt, and if you threaten me, I can throw one hell of a punch. I think I'm good." Sunshine clicked her tongue and gave a small thumbs-up, flashing a sarcastic grin in his direction as she did so.

Was she a little bit angry? Yes, but it probably hadn't been his fault. Or, rather, if it was somehow is fault, neither of them knew because he didn't remember anything, and it was probably an accident. Probably. A hint of suspicion started to leak into Sunshine's head, causing her to nervously bite her lip, which was a habit she had when she didn't trust someone or something. It helped her focus, to read their face to tell if they were lying, which she hadn't been doing up until now. "If I were mortally wounded then I think I wouldn't be standing here now." His next comment made her snicker a little - at least he wasn't optimistic all the time, and at least he had some capacity for sarcasm. Thank god, too. Sunshine abhorred overly-optimistic people - she just couldn't stand them, with their annoying cheeriness, their horrific optimism. As a matter of fact, she found that the people whose neutral face was a smile were always a little creepy, regardless of their true intentions.

"Ah, yes. You clearly don't know what exaggeration is, how nice." Sunshine retorted, cocking an eyebrow as she spoke. "And trust me - I do insist. Come on." Sunshine bent down, gently picking up her messenger bag by the mangled remains of her car. Slinging it over her shoulder and spinning on her heel as she did so, beginning to walk away from the Doctor. Sunshine didn't know whether or not he was following her, but if he wasn't, she would make sure to drag him with her. Sunshine also made sure to see that she was walking slowly, glancing over her shoulder once in a while to make sure that the Doctor was following her. The golden hour that she loved so much had passed, finally, the sun finally streaking the sky with bleeding reds and dusty oranges. It, being the sun, looked lovely over the water, she knew, and She had a commute of sorts - she lived down closer to the heart of London, and her brother owned a house down by the river Thames. She would split her weeks between the houses, making sure her brother was doing okay with his broken legs, and taking care of the dog she, herself owned. Today, she was heading up to her own house, and there was some way there from the area between Soho and Westminster, where the school lay, so she wouldn't have a chance to watch the sun set over the water, sadly. She became more focused on the task at hand and not on the sky as she rounded the corner leading to the school door. How long had it been since she left this building? Five minutes? A half hour? Time didn't seem relevant when a strange man in a box just accidentally crushed your car, it seemed, but judging by the sun's position, Sunshine would say around half an hour. She returned her attention once more onto the door as she produced the key from her pocket, gently unlocking the door before looking over her shoulder once more.

 


	6. the beginning, part 6

This Sunshine was fiery, all right. There wasn't anything that could apparently slip past her - she heard even his little mutter to himself, spoken under his breath. "You can pack 'one hell of a punch', can you?" he questioned, eyeing her. "If it's all the same to you I don't think a live demonstration will be necessary." The Doctor was naturally distrustful of those who preferred to use violence rather than just talking and diplomacy, and however much he liked Sunshine for her fiery nature, this part of her that was a bit prone to violence wasn't exactly something that he appreciated in her. It was like a rough edge, one that grated on him. Perhaps it was merely bravado....a woman alone confronted by a man emerging from a police box that had crushed her car, perhaps that was just something to keep him from attacking her or something similar. However, the way she had wielded that knife hinted towards real knowledge and not just the panicked bravado someone else would employ, so perhaps it was a good idea just to be wary of her for the moment, or just not get too close. He wondered vaguely if she had army or combat experience elsewhere.   
  
Sunshine gave him a sarcastic retort - not the first and not the last, the Doctor thought. "Fiesty, are we?" he muttered lowly at this, pushing himself off of the TARDIS where he had been leaning before and following Sunshine in the direction of the school. It was getting late, the Time Lord noticed, as his eyes tracked the progression of the sun across the sky; as they had been talking time had still sped fast, as normal. It was almost odd to see a normal Earth sunset instead of another planet's sunset, but it was beautiful all the same. As he neared Sun his hand went sneakily into his battered trench coat, digging out the sonic screwdriver. That had been safe inside his coat all this time - it had been the cost and him that had taken the brunt of it and the screwdriver itself was fine. With one hand he slid the sonic behind his back and pointed it in the direction of the TARDIS, issuing a small issue perception filter over his ship as he walked away. The last thing he needed was some student sneaking around after hours having a poke at it, or anyone else having a look at it either...it wouldn't protect it against the Daleks but they wouldn't come quite so soon and it just saved it from anyone who was curious enough to wonder why - or how - a police box had crushed a car. As soon as he had done this the Doctor sneaked his screwdriver back into his coat. "Coming," he said as he did this to draw attention away from the sonic, drawing level with Sun as they walked. They were nearing the school now and Sunshine had produced a key from her pocket, one of many items she apparently carried on her person alongside the knife. Why did she have a knife on her, anyway? As a teacher it wasn't like she was out fighting all day. The Time Lord voiced this. "Why do you have a Swiss army knife on you? You said yourself that being a schoolteacher was hardly a dangerous job. Or is that your last resort for misbehaving students?" He glanced at her sideways, a touch of humour in his tone.

* * *

 

Sunshine raised her eyebrows at his words, a small smile crossing her face.

"I can, to be fair. Go ahead and ask my brother. I won't demonstrate on you, though, don't worry. I think your jaw has suffered enough damage. Besides - I don't spend my time punching strangers. Or really anyone, if they don't deserve it. I use a punching bag instead, mostly to vent frustration and anger that I've pent up." Sunshine murmured, a hint of laughter lacing her voice. She wasn't a particularly violent person - or, at least, she didn't think she was. She had taken nontraditional self-defense classes starting at an early age at the insistence of her uncle, who she liked quite a bit, maybe more than her immediate family. Sunshine knew her way around pressure points and strong points, where to strike and where to avoid being hit.

Since her parents had forbade actual self-defense classes, finding them impractical for 'a girl of her size,' seeing as Sunshine was a fairly short and scrawny child, the same uncle who had insisted on taking the self-defense classes taught her himself, as he had been a boxer when he was younger. Sunshine knew most of her tricks from him, and though she was no longer short nor was she particularly scrawny, seeing as she was five foot four and weighed somewhere around one hundred and fifteen pounds, but the dodging and then hitting part of her combat expertise came in handy.

Plus, Sunshine had briefly been drafted into the army, and carrying a knife with her became some sort of second nature, even after she was sent home for misconduct.

" _Feisty, are we?_ " Sunshine raised an eyebrow at this remark, a half-lidded look of slight disapproval and slight amusement. The word 'feisty' held...several different connotations. To some, it was a compliment. To others, it was a form of underhanded catcalling. Sunshine was somewhere in the middle - where she usually wouldn't describe herself as 'feisty,' she knew that others would think differently, and the word seemed slightly...inappropriate to say to a stranger, especially one whose car you had just crushed.

"Well, you could put it that way, if it fancies you. Personally, I would think the word sounds a bit strange coming from... well, from a stranger. But to each their own, I suppose." She propped the school door open, leaning on it slightly so he could pass through.

" _Why do you have a Swiss army knife on you? You said yourself that being a schoolteacher was hardly a dangerous job. Or is that your last resort for misbehaving students?_ " This question took her aback a little. It took her a few moments to respond, letting her mouth fall open a small bit as she looked for words. "It's a self-defense mechanism. I was in the army for two years before I got kicked out. It became second nature. Let's not talk about it, alright?" She said, all previous traces of humor in her voice gone, tone turned icy and cold. "Just go inside, will you?" Sunshine added, a small shake coming onto the end of her sentence. Regardless of her situation, Sunshine despised having to talk about her time in the army - it wasn't something she wanted to dwell on for too long, and she tended to be quiet when it was brought up, and if she did talk, it was in the same cold and icy tone she was using now.

 


	7. the beginning, part 7.

Sunshine smiled a little at his words, before saying that she could indeed pack a punch and that she used a punching bag to vent out frustration and anger. He raised his eyebrows a tad but, in the end, could do nothing but shrug at this. The more time he spent with this Sunshine the more curious she got - he doubted that many teachers knew self defence. Regardless, he had no intention of sticking around. It wasn't in the Doctor's way to lie about things for too long and it must've already seemed that for someone who had 'concussion', or at least had had a bad knock, he seemed to be operating just fine and talking normally when there should really have been a speech delay and at least a bit of confusion. He had none of that and whilst he could fake a mild concussion whilst Sunshine had a look at him the longer he stayed here the more it would become obvious that there was in fact nothing wrong bar a few cuts and bruises and then he'd have questions fired in his direction again, questions that he couldn't - and wouldn't - answer. As much as this Sunshine was interesting to talk to he was still determined on going. He had things to do, places to go and TARDISes to fix, and he didn't want to leave the TARDIS for long given that he hadn't even been able to tell the full extent of the damage. In truth he couldn't follow Sun fast enough, although her comment about his use of the word 'feisty' was something that he nevertheless heard. "I meant nothing by it," he said innocently, moving past her as they went inside the school.  
  
The school was a bog standard school, nothing too special about it. The Doctor glanced around as he went in, noting some of the doors leading off into the offices of the office ladies and the headteacher. A noticeboard nearby had posters stuck on it with pins, the posters talking about a school disco and a charity raffle going on next week. He strolled about a bit. When had he last been in a school? It would have to have been with the Krillitanes, again with Rose and Mickey, Rose's boyfriend at the time. The thought made him almost melancholy for a little while before he remembered that another companion had been with him that time - old Sarah Jane Smith from long ago. Still investigating, that was his Sarah. He wondered vaguely where she was now before Sunshine's icy words could be heard, dragging him away from his memories. " _It's a self-defense mechanism. I was in the army for two years before I got kicked out. It became second nature,_ " she said, almost defensively. "Let's not talk about it, alright?" Her tone was cold and he knew that, once more, he had apparently hit a nerve. This Sunshine, despite her literally sunny name, appeared to be have a lot of nerves to hit. And a soldier, too. An ex soldier, teaching at a school. He had been right - she was a curious one. A curious one with a lot of baggage and various topics which were unspeakable. "Alright," he said softly. He had obviously hit a nerve and a delicate one come to that; although he didn't actually need medical help from her he had no reason to alienate her nor did he particularly want to. Instead he glanced towards Sunshine for a moment or two speculatively before turning his gaze and looking around at his surroundings. 

* * *

 

Sunshine gave an internal sigh of relief as the Doctor ducked into the school, dropping the subject of the knife that now lay in her pocket. She followed close behind him, this time running over what she would do in the nurse's office. Standard procedures, check reflexes and how much he could feel, just in case any damage had been done to his spinal cord, any form of confusion, a feeling of drowsiness or feeling sluggish, any dizziness, double vision or blurred vision, a headache, and, lastly, checking his heartbeat. And, obviously, a band-aid for that cut would be necessary. Of course, not necessarily in that order. Some of those weren't mandatory for checking a concussion, of course, but if he had, indeed, crashed into her car, it was better to be safe than sorry.

Sunshine lifted her head from looking at her shoes and stared out the window. She couldn't help but smile a bit as she watched the darkening sky - stars were already beginning to seep through the bleeding reds and oranges of the sky. Most people Sunshine knew saw the day and the night as polar opposites - traditionally viewed as the dark and light sides of nature. Sun didn't - to her, stars were just far away suns - too far away to cast day on the earth, but spreading their own heat throughout their respective planets. At times like the early evening, Sunshine was happy to have her name - in a sense, as her grandmother used to say when she was alive, 'Sunshine was everywhere.' And as much as her name might invoke a gentle image, Sunshine preferred the sun rather than its rays. It was fierce and old, so very, very old, and it burned with an impossible rage that softened as it cast down on the planet that couldn't live without it. It was fire and heat, and it burned those who looked straight at it. However, at the same time, it did provide light and heat to a planet that would be dead and barren without it. Of course, Sun was well aware that she wasn't a flaming ball of gas in the sky, but she was secretly proud that she could say she shared some characteristics.

She dragged herself away from thoughts of the sun and returned to the school, slowing down slightly so she could nudge the Doctor towards the nurse's office door. "Sit there and wait for a second." Sunshine ordered, pointing to the medical-bed-esque mattress in the corner of the room as she turned on the lights and began to stroll around the office. She knew where everything was now, so after a few moments of digging through cabinets, she pulled out a reflex hammer and stethoscope, which she slung over her neck. "Alright. Heartbeat and reflexes first, to make sure you're not injured in any other way than the cut on your face and your concussion. Brain damage can mess up your heartbeat, and who knows what you did to crash yourself into my car."

 


	8. the beginning, part 8.

Sunshine didn't say anything and the Doctor didn't make conversation. It was probably best that they weren't talking - after all, he had managed to touch enough nerves and Sun was already touchy to start off with. Obviously her work as a soldier was something that she didn't like talking about. She had mentioned being 'kicked out', and he wondered on what grounds she had been dismissed. Perhaps it had been for a sort of misconduct - perhaps Sun hadn't listened to someone's instructions or had decided to go her own way without telling the others in her regiment, or, alternatively, she had spoken back to someone of a much higher rank than herself. Considering what he had seen of the teacher perhaps that was what she had done; she didn't seem the type to suffer fools easily, or the type to follow orders to the letter without a very, very good reason to. The thought made the Doctor internally smile wryly, as he had never had the 'follower' gene himself; it came part and parcel of being a renegade. That shake at the end of her sentence, though - now, that really was telling. It had shown a vulnerability behind the sarcasm and the 'tough girl' exterior....but regardless, the Doctor had no intention of digging up Sun's secrets, and he wasn't going to pry when a solid brick wall had been placed in front of him. He respected walls such as this when he saw them and he didn't have time, anyway, to start prying into the story behind the owner of the car he had just crashed on top of with the TARDIS. It just would've been nice, in his view, for him to have had an indication as to where that said solid wall lay. Still, at least she hadn't pulled the knife on him. Small mercies.  
  
Sunshine slowed down slightly behind him and the Doctor turned around, seeing that she had opened a door which, presumably, led into some sort of sick bay room or nurse's office. "Sit there and wait for a second," she said to him, indicating to the rather barren-looking mattress in the corner of the room as she flicked on the lights and began rummaging about in the office. The Time Lord entered the room and glanced around, taking in the whitewashed walls. One of the walls had a poster of the human muscle structure on it, alongside the names of the muscles in Latin in small face by the side. Transversus thoracis, he read on the poster as he looked around before ambling over to the mattress and sitting down obediently. Sunshine was still busy looking through cabinets before, apparently, finding what she needed. She came back with a reflex hammer and a stethoscope, and he eyed the latter of these warily, but before he could speak she was already saying something. " _Alright. Heartbeat and reflexes first, to make sure you're not injured in any other way than the cut on your face and your concussion._ " The Time Lord looked up at her from where he was sitting on the mattress. "There's no need to check my vitals," he said hurriedly with a grin of someone trying to be more casual than they were. "Surely you should be asking whether I'm dizzy rather than checking my reflexes or heartbeat." Sunshine had already expressed suspicion over the TARDIS - she didn't need to know that he had two hearts. It wasn't something that he could blame on concussion. 

* * *

 

" _There's no need to check my vitals._ " He said it too fast, Sunshine noticed, making a mental note to return to the subject later. Right now, she needed to get him to let her continue with the procedures.

"Call it extra precautions. And you'll let me do it, unless you have something to hide." Sun said quickly, just before he spoke again, this time about seeing if he was dizzy and not his reflexes or heartbeat. "Alright. Well, I know you're not dizzy. You walked straight, without stumbling and wavering. You also would have voiced being dizzy once you told me that you couldn't remember anything." Sunshine said simply, setting the reflex hammer beside the Doctor on the mattress before bending down so she was on her knees, able to check his heart. Why wouldn't the Doctor want her to check his heartbeat, just to make sure he was alright completely? Sunshine was internally running a checklist of things that could be wrong with him. Maybe a heart defect? Why would someone want to hide a heart defect? It could have lead to this, after all - quick irregular beat, no blood to the brain, or... something.

As much as Sunshine tried to hide it, she was a little uneasy of this 'Doctor,' even though he had made no moves of aggression towards her, nor did he say anything even remotely unkind, though some of his word choices were a bit less than preferable, or at least in Sunshine's personal opinion. He was most certainly hiding something, that much Sunshine was absolutely sure of. She still was a little skeptical of his concussion, as well - people could usually remember what happened around an hour to even ten minutes before they hit their head, but he seemed to know...well, nothing.

Biting her lower lip gently, Sunshine pulled away from her thoughts and slid the stethoscope off of her shoulders, sliding the buds into her ears. Gently reaching up with the end of the stethoscope, Sunshine gingerly placed it on the Doctor's chest, careful not to press too hard. Sunshine had a feeling the Doctor wasn't fond of being touched, so she made all of her movements gentle and soft, like she was treating an especially nervous or touchy child, which she had to do several times. As soon as the end was on the Doctor's chest fully, Sunshine immediately frowned.

Two heartbeats, was the first thought that came into her head. Two heartbeats, beating in..well, not in unison, which made the difference between one heartbeat and two heartbeats audible. Her eyebrows furrowing slightly, she shifted the end of the stethoscope slightly, but the sound of two heartbeats remained. Slowly removing the stethoscope from her ears, she gradually stood up, all while staring at the Doctor in a mixture of doubt and confusion. "Is it my head, or did I hear two heartbeats?" Was this why? Maybe he had a strange birth defect - it hadn't been unheard of, though the one she could think of off the top of her head occurred so long ago, with a boy with three legs and two hearts. It was possible for the mutation to resurface, but Sunshine wanted it straight from the Doctor.

 


	9. the beginning, part 9.

Despite the Doctor's insistence that he didn't need his vitals checked, Sunshine appeared to want to check them anyway. " _Call it extra precautions,_ "she had said. 'Stubborn' doesn't cover it, the Time Lord thought to himself, exasperated, as the woman went on. She was saying that he would let her do it unless he had 'something to hide'. Ohhh, the Doctor thought, She's clever. No flies on the teacher, clearly. Perhaps she knew he was hiding something, but she had no clue what. He didn't blame her - there wasn't anything he could be hiding that she knew of. A heart defect or something similar was hardly something to lie about; it was a medical problem and nothing else. "Oh, nothing to hide," he replied breezily, with a particularly nonchalant air that was a complete opposite to his own internal thoughts on the matter. Oh, he had something to hide all right. "It's just that it's getting late, you need to go home, mark the students' homework..." he trailed off and glanced up as she saw through his ploy about dizziness at once. He shrugged; it had been worth a try. Clearly Sunshine was quite on the ball - despite being in unusual circumstances - and wouldn't take no for an answer either way. It was obviously the persistent teacher gene; every teacher had it. The Doctor exhaled sharply, knowing when he was beat. This Sunshine could certainly be like a dog with a bone when she wanted to; she had been insistently all the way along . "Alright," he said, admitting defeat. "Go on, check my heartbeat, if it makes you happy." He wasn't sure if it would, though. It would make her confused, all right, and unsure, perhaps even a little afraid....'happy' was not the feeling that immediately came to mind when you heard the Doctor's heartbeat. Orheartbeats.  
  
Sunshine got the stethoscope ready, pushing the buds into her ears and placing the bell very carefully on his chest. Her touch was delicate and soft, which the Time Lord appreciated; he stayed very still, almost stock still, as he felt the cold sensation on his chest thanks to the bell. Three, two, one... and there it was, a frown on Sunshine's features. The Doctor studied her face, checking her reaction as her eyebrows gradually began to furrow slightly at what she was hearing; she was hearing them, he took it, the two heartbeats that would have sounded so strange to her but yet were a part of life for him and for his kind. She shifted the bell slightly to try to presumably check if she was hearing his heartbeat alright, as though trying to make allowances for what she was hearing as it couldn't possibly be true, but the heartbeats, the Doctor knew, would be the same as they had been to start off with and moving around the bell would hardly change that. After a moment or two she seemed to come to this conclusion herself, as Sunshine removed the stethoscope from her ears and stood up. He could feel her gaze and he looked up at her, meeting her eyes to see a mixture of stupefaction, doubt and uncertainty looking back at him.   
  
Human beings. They didn't know any better, really. They had seen aliens but had tried their best to forget about them...they were still a fledgling species at this time, still hesitantly going to the moon and sending out probes into the stars around them, still only contemplating the galaxies and the constellations and the many worlds out there that they just couldn't touch however hard they tried. He imagined that the other Time Lords, when they had been alive, had not understood his love for the human race....human beings hadn't come to the attention of the Time Lords very much, though they popped up here and there among the more colourful members of the cast of the universe, the stand-ins and the extras surrounding the Slitheen, the Cybermen, and of course the Daleks. Indomitable, though, that's what the human beings were. He didn't - and couldn't - consider them aliens; he had too many friends among them for that. In a few hundred years they'd be sailing off, building that Great and Bountiful Human Empire that was, for the moment, an idea only found in science fiction books and novels - they would be successful, if they lived through a few more centuries and kept on building, kept on innovating, kept up the longing to see the stars that made them so ambitious, gave them the strength to carry on and ultimately gave them the Doctor's respect. Give them time and they'd get there, that was what he had told various life forms in the past that had come to Earth; give them time, allow them to adjust as you did, and then they too would join the galactic stage. But, for now, they were fledglings, and had to be protected, had to be consciously given the time which would allow them to become what they were ultimately destined to be. Their time would come - but until that great time came, aliens from another world, from a human being's perspective, weren't the type of person that you casually brought into a school and used a stethoscope on. And he knew that very well.   
  
Perhaps that conclusion had come to Sunshine, maybe not, but if it were the latter it would eventually. It was only a matter of time. " _Is it my head, or did I hear two heartbeats?_ " The Doctor looked decidedly sheepish from where he sat on the bed. "You would've done, yes." Questions would be asked and he didn't want her panicking or deciding to draw that knife of hers - having two hearts wasn't exactly normal - so he gave a smile to try and ease her uncertainty, before lightheartedly adding, with perhaps a little of a conspiratorial tone like he was sharing a secret, "Don't tell anyone."

* * *

 

" _You would've done, yes._ " That was what Sunshine had been expecting, deep down, even if she hoped the answer would be a no of some sort.

Biting her lip, Sunshine narrowed her eyes as she thought what she should do. What she should say. As he remarked not to tell anyone, Sunshine looked up and shook her head. "I don't think anyone would believe me, even if I did tell." Sunshine countered softly, before setting the stethoscope on the cabinet and seating herself a little ways away from the Doctor. Sunshine remained silent for a few more moments before suddenly speaking. "Can I ask why? Or, maybe, more appropriately, how? How slash why do you have two hearts?" Sunshine glanced over at him as she spoke, raising her eyebrows. "Oh, and I'm assuming you don't have a concussion after all, so do you want to tell me what the police box is and how you and it ended up crashing on top of my car?" She added suddenly, not giving him time to respond to her first question. Sunshine had a rather bad and annoying habit, or at least annoying to the people she was talking to, of asking extremely rapid-fire questions with almost little to no hesitation and definitely no time for the other person to respond. Her uncle, the one that had insisted on teaching her self-defense and the one that had practically convinced her that joining the army would be beneficial, to the country, to her sense of morals and her sense of character, often described her as a 'fast-speaking blur of a girl,' due to the fact she was often moving very fast, just as she often spoke very fast. She no longer spoke at impossible speeds now that she was a teacher and had to have children understand her five days a week. Even then, though, it happened when she was nervous, making her voice tended to speed up only a little, often making Sunshine smudge her words together.

But in any case, she realized her mistake, and silently hoped the Doctor wouldn't mind her sudden rapid-fire questioning and quick speaking. She wasn't especially nervous right now - she was more excited than nervous.

Sunshine loved mysteries - Sunshine loved no other book genre more than a book with any sort of mystery in it, whether they be sci-fi or Nancy Drew. Even when she was a child, one of her silly play dreams, the ones you have when you're young and don't know how the world works quite yet, was to become a detective, a Sherlock Holmes-like detective. Of course, once she got older, she learned that Sherlock Holmes-like detectives no longer existed, nor did she really want to be one.

But now - now there was this Doctor, a man who crashed on her car in a police box, and now, as Sunshine just learned, had two hearts. Now, he was a mystery in and of himself, and Sunshine did love a good mystery. Of course, Sunshine knew the Doctor wouldn't be a simple mystery that you can solve like that - he would probably be a long, big, complicated and slightly aggregating kind of mystery, which Sun still loved regardless. Besides, the chances of the Doctor being a normal human being were decreasing by the second, and that usually meant some sort of mystery, or at least in Sunshine's book. Not that...this happened very often, of course, or even at all, but Sunshine could remember a few strange happenings over the course of her lifetime, the majority of them occurring on Christmas, oddly enough. The holiday itself had become a slightly jinxed holiday back then, and even if it had straightened itself out in more recent years, Sunshine was still well aware people were a little more jumpy around then, as if they were half-expecting something to smash into Big Ben. Oddly enough, Sunshine felt a little giddy at the prospect of another...whatever it had been coming to London - humans liked to feel scared, but they didn't like feeling threatened. Odd creatures, humans, Sunshine thought, though she was one of them. Maybe that was what made humans so odd - they had the capacity to think themselves strange or unnatural. Of course, the excitement of Christmas and it's usual invasion had dampened over the years, partially because they actually became life-threatening, and partially because they were almost a tradition now, a habit. Like having a birthday when you're thirty-seven, it just became a sort of...chore. But now that this... Doctor was here with a police box that crushed her car, Sunshine was getting that excitement about a mystery that had happened the first few Christmases again.

 


	10. the beginning, part 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of a bigger chapter, because i do what i want

Well, the secret was out now. Not much the Doctor could do about that, considering that Sunshine had physically heard the evidence for herself and there wasn't much a second heartbeat could - and would - otherwise suggest. She seemed to be coping fairly well as he watched her, though. With narrowed eyes she was biting her lip, something he had seen her do before when she was thinking; she was turning it over in her mind, he suspected, trying it sort it out in her head. The Time Lord said nothing, giving her the time to process it without interfering or saying anything else. After a second or two, just after he had lightheartedly told her not to tell anyone, she finally looked up and shook her head. " _I don't think anyone would believe me,_ " she said, " _Even if I did tell._ " The Doctor shrugged. Well, there was that - it wasn't like human beings were known for having two hearts and if she told anyone she'd probably be labelled as a laughing stock. This was only a Level Five planet after all...there were other two-hearted species out there - and even two-headed, although that was something completely different - but he was the one member of one that came to the planet regularly and even then he was known only by UNIT and Torchwood and the friends he had made. Of course in the year that never happened, everyone knew his name, but fame was not something that the Doctor was overly attracted to and when the year had been reversed, after the Doctor had been incarcerated for that year and aged for the Master's sole amusement, all of that had been forgotten so it was back to the old ways of walking (fairly) anonymously around the Earth. One of the other species were the Apalapucians, come to think of it. The Doctor inwardly shuddered. Nasty plague was happening over there that could only be contracted by two hearted beings, one that could kill in a day, or so it was said, and could even be contracted by Time Lords.....  
  
Sunshine had set the stethoscope on the cabinet and sat herself down. She was silent for a moment or two but the Doctor didn't push it, instead watching her thoughtfully and giving her space. When she spoke, however, it all came tumbling down like a ton of bricks. " _Can I ask why?_ " she asked, before speaking again. " _Or maybe, more appropriately, how? How slash why do you have two hearts?_ " She raised her eyebrows but before the Doctor could speak she went on, speaking fast and rapidly with a certain suddenness to her voice as questions came on after another and they all spilled out. She was interested, he could tell, and rather than being scared of him she seemed rather intrigued - which was of course always better than the alternative. " _Oh, and I'm assuming you don't have concussion after all, so do you want to tell me what the police box is and how you and it ended up crashing on top of my car?_ " Her questions were delivered in a certain rapid fire style of speech and do the Doctor waited a semi-second just to ensure that she didn't have any more questions that suddenly came to mind before he could set about answering the ones she had already brought to the table. For a teacher she was certainly had a lot of life about her, unlike some of the wizened old crones that some schools sported; she had to be a hit with the children, although known, he suspected, for being strict as well, strict enough to rarely have to raise her voice when dealing with a problem student. Why was it he was always bumping into teachers, anyway? His very first companions had been teachers - good old Ian and Barbara who had taught his Susan in 1963. The thought made him almost melancholy.   
  
Bringing himself back to the present the Doctor got more comfortable on the mattress before glancing over to Sunshine. "I didn't have concussion, no." He glanced up at Sun. "Sorry. That police box is..." He paused to find a word. His home? His machine? His mother, which was what in some occasions she practically was to him? "My car. Sort of. I travel in it and I crashed." There was no need to go into why he had crashed for the moment - the more she knew the worse off she'd be regarding that, he thought. At her age she'd probably have seen a few alien life forms already - she would have been in the year that never was for starters probably in some refugee camp somewhere, though she wouldn't remember it - but again there was that sense of not wanting to scare her off and wanting to start off slowly. He gave her a smile. "You're not meant to fly her by yourself and she's an old girl." But how was he meant to phrase the answer to her other question? "I have two hearts because my people have two, much like you only have the one because your people have one. It's the way things work." It was once said that Time Lords had two of everything they should have one of and four of everything else, though that would probably just freak Sunshine out so he kept it simple for the moment. "As for the how, it's related to being exposed to the time vortex for hundreds of years as a species, not descending from primates..."He trailed off. He didn't want to scare Sunshine by boldly going in with the "I'm an alien" card - at least he looked human, just as Sunshine looked Time Lord, which was something.

* * *

 

Sunshine raised her eyebrows slightly in triumph as the Doctor finally gave up on the concussion spiel. Not a big gesture, but enough to let him know she was well aware of her victory there. Sunshine saw most things, even the smallest doubt about someone having a concussion, as a competition, maybe an argument. She made it her goal to win as many as possible. Of course, Sunshine knew a lot of people who did this. Most of them expressed the victory by whispering 'knew it' under their breath and grinning. However, Sunshine held herself in much too high esteem to whisper 'knew it,' and she did not, under any circumstances, smile. Sure, she gave little half-smiles, smug half-smile when she was annoyed or just humoring whoever she was with. She didn't know anyone who had actually seen her smile in recent years. As far as she could tell, she hadn't truly smiled in a very long time. Probably not since she got drafted and then kicked out.

It left kind of an imprint on her, and she had decided she wanted to save that smile, that true, honest-to-god-happy smile for something big. Something important.

Holding in a smile was easy for Sunshine - she didn't smile much even under different circumstances. Sunshine perked up a little as the Doctor began mentioning the police box, snapping to attention and straightening her back a little.

" _My car. Sort of. I travel in it and I crashed._ " Sunshine took a few moments to think, narrowing her eyes as she did so.

"Hm. Neat. What do you mean when you say it's only sort of a car? I mean, other than the fact that it's...not a car, and it's a police box." Sunshine folded her hands under her chin, resting her elbows on her knees as she spoke. His answer to her question about having two hearts interested her, however. He said it like it was just..a fact, like it had always been that way and that it was the simplest thing in the world, for his 'people' to have two hearts and...Sunshine's people, which she deduced to mean humans, to have one. The next thing he said startled her a little. "As for the how, it's related to being exposed to the time vortex for hundreds of years as a species, not descending from apes..." This made Sunshine lean forward a little, widen her eyes and allow her eyebrows to arch up a little. "What's the time vortex? Also, should I take the 'descending from apes' comment as an offensive thing or not?" Sunshine asked quietly, adjusting her sitting position so she was leaning against the opposite wall, at the end of the bed, with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees. She looked rather like a kid now, with the excitement and child-like wonder lighting up her eyes and her position, that of a child listening to a story at bedtime. Of course, no smile was making an appearance on her face quite yet, but Sunshine had a feeling that this might be a big and important event. Maybe.

* * *

Well, someone was a happy bunny for having spotted that the Doctor's fictional concussion was indeed fictional; there was a certain triumphant look on Sunshine's face when he glanced up at her from the mattress, the look of someone who felt very satisfied with herself indeed. She's clever,the Doctor thought as he looked at her; definitely clever. Someone who hadn't been at a school or around teachers since his or her schooldays could say that all teachers had to be clever to teach, though this was unfortunately not the case and teachers both on this world and the next always managed to somehow get through with their profession without even the smallest amount of common sense. Sunshine, to her credit, and more than common sense. He could see her thinking about the TARDIS being a 'car' now and practically heard the cogs turning in her head. " _Hm. Neat,_ " she said, before, once more, a question was asked. The Doctor was expecting questions now; they seemed inevitable with Sun. He could have spoken about the ins and outs of a paper bag and there'd be questions from her, or so it seemed. " _What do you mean when you say it's only sort of a car? I mean, other than the fact that it's...not a car, and it's a police box._ " "Alright, if you want the flashy word," the Doctor said, tiring of metaphors,"It's a spaceship. Disguised as a police box." He did need to get that chameleon circuit fixed one day. He had an odd feeling it was something to do with binary....it was possibly the worst thing about being the last of your kind; there was no one to ask when your TARDIS wouldn't work or something went wrong. "I personally rather like it. It looks better when it's not smoking and not on someone's car." A twitch of a smile came to his features.   
  
Sunshine was almost like a little kid, folding her hands under her chin and resting her elbows on her knees whilst she listened to him. He could tell she was interested, though the thing that really grabbed her was his mention of the time vortex. He shifted to move against the opposite wall to face her as she asked what it was, getting himself comfortable. She was asking a lot of questions and considering she was asking questions at every turn, which he didn't blame her for, it was probably best to get comfortable early on. "Well," he said, absentmindedly ruffling his hair as he thought aloud, "It's the transdimensional spiral where time and space meet, intersecting at an angle determined by non-Euclidean geometry..." He glanced at her face, wondering if, to her, he was talking a whole load of rubbish. "It's a wobbly bit that time machines fly through," he said, thinking it was best to explain it simply. There was a certain degree of pride in his tone when he spoke next. "My lot made it." The time vortex had been around before he was born - millions of years before in fact - but the Time Lords of the past had originally made it; he had read about it in the Citadel's library during his Academy century in the old books written in Old High Gallifreyan. Exposure to it had allowed the Gallifreyans as a whole species to get two hearts and various other physical traits, among them a severe allergy to aspirin. The Doctor had thought about that sometimes, how the time vortex could bestow extra hearts among different races but yet, at the same time, give a rather pathetic allergy to aspirin that meant that a Time Lord could be killed stone dead by any dose of the stuff; it seemed, in retrospect, a bit pathetic next to giving restorative regenerative powers and everything else that made the Time Lords legendary. He still kept it in the TARDIS though for the comfort his human companions regardless; as long as he didn't slip the stuff into his tea he ought to be fine.  
  
Sunshine had wanted to know whether to take his 'apes' comment as offensive or not. "Nah, I wouldn't." He gave Sunshine, who was of course the nearest human, a speculative look before his gaze moved to the poster on the wall as he spoke. "Makes you what you are. The human race." The Time Lord glanced back at Sun and gave a grin before crossing his arms. "Life wouldn't be the same without all of you. You never fail to surprise me, for one thing."

* * *

 

Sunshine nodded slightly as the Doctor began speaking, once more adjusting her position so she was sitting up straight.

" _It's a spaceship. Disguised as a police box._ " Sunshine gave another victorious eyebrow raise, allowing the corner of her lips to perk up in a smug expression.

"Not many other things it could be, if you give it a little bit of thought. If you have an open mind, it's actually quite easy to deduce that it's a spaceship. It crashed at an angle, meaning it came from up high. Diagonally up high, to be specific, so it couldn't really have fallen from anywhere but the sky, which means that it was flying. You were flying, then started on a downward trajectory, probably due to something failing, and crashed into my car. Speaking of that, do you make a habit of crushing schoolteacher's cars, or is this a new thing for you? You sound as if you've said this all before. A bit bored, to be exact." Sunshine interjected, her voice speeding up once more with excitement.

Sunshine always got excited when explaining how she thought something worked - she liked to think of the world as a great big machine - everything worked in some way or another, which then caused something else to work and the cycle repeated. Sunshine liked to figure how those things worked down to the details. Sunshine, however, stopped thinking about trajectories and aeronautics as soon as the Doctor began speaking about the time vortex, whatever that was. "

You kind of lost me at non-Euclidean geometry. I mean, I know what it is, non-Euclidean geometry. You will have to excuse me if I'm not keen on it, but you'll have to keep in mind that fifth graders aren't leaning non-Euclidean geometry, and I'm not teaching it, so I'm not one hundred percent up to date on it. Other than that, I get it. Like you said. Wobbly bit where time and space intersect at...some angle and that allows time machines to fly through. It sounds like a glorified wormhole, really." Sunshine said softly, looking down as she thought about what he said. Non-Euclidean geometry, non-Euclidean geometry, what had she learned about non-Euclidean geometry? Euclid's method, that's what it was. Euclid was an Alexandrian Greek mathematician, why would a time vortex be based off his methods? Surely a Greek mathematician couldn't...know what a time vortex's angles were based off, right?

Sunshine was beginning to get a bit confused, and her head was beginning to hurt a little from thinking about such things. After all, the adrenaline and excitement were beginning to wear off, the actual shock of 'oh god, I'm sitting next to an alien who just crushed my car' was starting to kick in, accompanied by the panic of suddenly being exposed to such things, and knowing that you are, in fact, as small and insignificant as you knew deep, deep down but hoped wasn't true. Sunshine just did an absolutely excellent job of maintaining and hiding her existential crises, including the one that was beginning to build on her right now.

 

 


	11. the beginning, part 11.

Sunshine was apparently not just triumphant but smug, as well. " _Not many other things it could be, if you give it a little bit of thought,_ " she said, raising an eyebrow. " _If you have an open mind, it's actually quite easy to deduce that it's a spaceship. It crashed at an angle, meaning it came from up high. Diagonally up high, to be specific, so it couldn't really have fallen from anywhere but the sky, which means that it was flying. You were flying, then started on a downward trajectory, probably due to something failing, and crashed into my car._ " The Doctor made a little 'hmm' sort of noise at that as though trying to make out that it wasn't due to something failing at all, though he didn't sound very truthful even to himself. She'd gotten that bit right - he had indeed crashed into her car, although she didn't know, and in fact wouldn't for the Doctor didn't expect her to know, that it wasn't quite as simple as things failing. Oh, sure, things within the TARDIS had failed - but because of Dalek space firearms aimed in his direction, not just because something had simply gone wrong. He was glad in truth that she hadn't picked this up; she seemed to be taking to it all remarkably well but even so she had already had to accept the existence of at least one alien, she didn't need to know about any others. He was roused from his thoughts as Sun continued. " _Speaking of that,_ " she said, obviously on a roll, " _Do you make a habit of crushing schoolteacher's cars, or is this a new thing for you? You sound as if you've said this all before. A bit bored, to be exact._ " The Doctor looked at her with indignation. "Oi! I don't make a habit of it, no. Well," he said, his voice dropping to a bit of an embarrassed mutter, "Not crashing onto schoolteachers' cars. Crashing elsewhere I'm a bit more familiar with. As I said, old girl, not really designed for one driver...."   
  
Sunshine was really going for it. Her voice was speeding up in excitement and she was less like a teacher from the Doctor's perspective and more like a student herself. "You kind of lost me at non-Euclidean geometry," she admitted, and the Doctor went to say something before she quickly continued. " _I mean, I know what it is, non-Euclidean geometry. You will have to excuse me if I'm not keen on it, but you'll have to keep in mind that fifth graders aren't leaning non-Euclidean geometry, and I'm not teaching it, so I'm not one hundred percent up to date on it._ " Oh, so she's a maths teacher? A maths teacher or a science one. The Doctor thought back to Ian for a moment or so before Sunshine continued. " _Other than that, I get it. Like you said. Wobbly bit where time and space intersect at...some angle and that allows time machines to fly through. It sounds like a glorified wormhole, really._ " The Doctor nodded from where he sat, leaning against the opposite wall to Sun. "It's a wormhole if you want to be accurate," he said, with a tone which suggested that he wanted to be anything but and wanted to make the time vortex sound a little more mysterious. He raised an eyebrow and a playful look came into his eye, one that was almost always there as a twinkle but every so often became something a little more when he was in a mischievous mood. "Who do you think told Euclid about that area of geometry?"   
  
Sunshine went quiet after that and it was almost like she was being a bit burnt out by it all. The Doctor looked at her for a moment or so, trying to gauge what she was thinking about. She was hiding her feelings well, though she was probably suffering, if the Doctor was right, from a bit of overload in terms of what was going on around her and what she had suddenly been exposed to without any prior warning. "If it helps," he said,"I'm not out to rule the world. I'm one of the friendly ones, honest." He stuck out a hand for Sunshine to shake. "Really," he said gently, trying to bring her round gently to it. "I've been knocking around Earth longer than you've been around." The theory was, of course, that if he'd wanted to invade he would have done it by now. And he didn't look exactly threatening, sitting on a mattress with a cut to his forehead and a bruise to his jaw alongside other injuries.

* * *

 

Sunshine couldn't help but snicker a little at his defensive tone. "Of course you don't make a habit of it. If there's supposed to be more than one driver, why are you the only one flying it?" Sunshine's eyes suddenly went to the cut on his forehead, before she stood up abruptly, striding over to the cabinet and sliding open the top drawer. "Your forehead is still bleeding." Sunshine noted suddenly, producing a band-aid from the drawer. "Regardless of you being an alien or not, you seem nice and I would hate for your cut to get infected." Sunshine mumbled, seating herself once more beside the Doctor and holding out the band-aid.

At the Doctor's note about Euclid, Sunshine raised and eyebrow and gave a sort of half-smile. "Well, judging by your expression and tone, I would guess you did. Also, judging by the fact that I assume you can travel through time, it would make sense if you told him. Where'd you learn about non-Euclidean geometry, then? Other than the time vortex, or wormhole, or whatever it is, of course." Sunshine said. It would make sense, if he did. Sunshine glanced down at his hand as the Doctor began to speak again, then back up at the Doctor's face.

" _If it helps, I'm not out to rule the world. I'm one of the friendly ones, honest._ " He seemed sincere. Sunshine didn't think he was out to get her or the world in the first place - he wasn't threatening or unkind in the slightest, and he looked.... well, he looked human. That raised some questions, of course. Sunshine gently took his hand and shook it before asking questions once more.

"Alright. So, you're not human. And if you're not human, why do you look like one? And, of course, if you're not human, what are you? You said you've been knocking around Earth longer than I've been alive. How old are you, then? Why did you crash? Did something go wrong, did you lose something, were you being chased? There's a number of things it could have been, I guess, but I'd still rather you tell me. Could you live without one of your hearts, or would that be like living without a lung? You said your police box, or spaceship, or whatever other kind of name it might have is supposed to be piloted by more than one person. How many people does it need to be piloted by, then? What other places have you crashed? What kind of aliens other than you are there? Where are you from? Is your name actually 'the Doctor,' or is that just an alias?" Sunshine liked asking questions. They were something she used to get what she wanted, asking rapid-fire questions until she threw someone off. It was a bit of a special skill, really. She often used it to her advantage, especially if she wanted something. Of course, in this situation, she didn't want anything out of the Doctor. Right now, she was just very curious, and a little bit afraid. Both of which were excellent motivators.

 


	12. the beginning, part 12.

Sunshine found his defensive tone funny, apparently. Her next question, however, didn't sound funny to him - not funny at all. The Time Lord's face fell as Sunshine went on, asking why he was the only one flying the TARDIS if there were meant to be more drivers at the console at any given time. It was a good question and there was a very good reason why he was the only one flying the TARDIS, a very good reason indeed....but thankfully he was spared from having to come up with an excuse for why there weren't any of his kind anymore as Sunshine suddenly became distracted with the cut on his forehead and strode over to the cabinet with her back to him. " _Regardless of you being an alien or not,_ " she said, " _You seem nice and I would hate for your cut to get infected._ " The Doctor took the plaster. "Thank you," he said, feeling for where the cut was. Having found the cut he gingerly placed the plaster over the cut skin, making sure that the central bit covered the main area of the cut. Gallifreyans were pretty good at healing but a plaster would help things along anyway, even if, with a plaster on his forehead, the Doctor looked a bit like an idiot. He wasn't entirely sure if he'd be taken seriously looking like this but it was only a temporary measure; the TARDIS had an entire room designed that he could do anything from take a pill to allow himself to fall into a coma, but with the TARDIS out he did have to make do a little.   
  
Sunshine raised an eyebrow when he mentioned Euclid and he grinned back. It was the benefit of time travel - he could get right in on the action. Most of the time he hadn't even intended to do anything or get involved; he'd just been sucked in, whether he liked it or not. Good things he'd been involved in, of course....bad things too. There was a flicker of something in the Doctor's eyes as he thought of the nightmare that had been Pompeii. There hadn't been a volcano after all - it had been him, all along. Of course, it hadn't just been him, Donna had been there too, but the guilt still lingered on his shoulders from where it had settled like a fine snow when he had had to prompt the explosion which led to the Pompeii eruption. A fixed event, caused by him. Who'd known....certainly not him. But one of the good bits of time travel was occasionally giving humanity a nudge, and this time a nudge in the right direction as opposed to the wrong. Euclid needed a bit of help with a theory of his and the Doctor had been around at the right time. Wouldn't do any harm to humanity, not really, and minor interferences like that helped to give people like Euclid a bit of a helpful hint when they needed it. " _Well, judging by your expression and tone, I would guess you did,_ " Sunshine said. She went on to ask how he knew about non-Euclidean geometry himself. The Doctor glanced towards her. "My people learnt about it when the universe was still young."He shrugged. Information like that was learnt in the early centuries spent in the Academy; it was a minor area of knowledge, one that was surpassed by other information learnt in the later centuries that talked of time travel. Of course, he had been a Prydonian, so things had been a little different for him. Regardless, the knowledge that Euclid was supposed to have dreamt up was hardly as brilliant on Gallifrey as it had been on Earth.   
  
Part of him knew that he was still using the present tense whilst referring to Gallifrey and his people, the Time Lords. The same part of him knew why; this was someone who didn't know, someone who didn't need to know that his people were dead. For once he could forget that he was the last of his kind, that he was the only one bearing all of the culture and the history of that planet and everyone who had walked on it. He could forget the genocide that he himself had cause. No - with someone who didn't know any better, the Doctor had his chance to play pretend, and although he knew that it couldn't last long and Sunshine was either going to work it out for herself or he'd be forced to tell her, for a few hours at least he could face it, could think that Gallifrey was still out there and only a TARDIS ride away. That thought alone was the most comforting.   
  
Sunshine glanced down at the Doctor's outstretched hand and at first the Time Lord wondered if she was going to reject his handshake or not. After a second or two of deliberation on her part she took his hand and shook it, which brought a gentle smile to the Doctor's face. He wasn't fond of being at odds with people - or people who didn't seem too bad, like Sunshine for example - and she seemed to trust him now, which was something at least. He shook her hand with feeling, his grin becoming broader by the minute. "Good to see we're seeing eye to eye, Sunshine. At last." There was a mischievous glint in his eye, for of course he was referring to the slightly abrasive and coarse friction between the two of them earlier. Now, however, they appeared to be, as he said, seeing eye to eye, with no knives involved (always a plus in any situation, or so the Doctor thought), Sunshine quite happy to listen to him and the Doctor in turn obliging with answering her questions, of which she had many. And the Doctor didn't know how many questions were in store for him until out came an entire avalanche of the things, all coming from Sunshine at a phenomenal speed." _Alright. So, you're not human,_ " she said. The Doctor nodded at that as an affirmative, but Sunshine wasn't finished yet. The questions came spilling out - why he looked like a human; what species he was; why he crashed; various scenarios about why he could have crashed; could he live without one of his hearts; how many people had to pilot the TARDIS; where he had crashed before; what kind of aliens there were apart from him; where he was from and what his name was. The Time Lord blinked a bit as the seemingly endless tirade finally finished, sending his head buzzing. When he had thought about how inquisitive Sunshine had been before, he clearly hadn't even seen the start of it.   
  
The Doctor crossed his legs at the ankles, his arms still crossed at his chest as he looked across the mattress towards Sun. "I'll tell you something,"he said, "You should've been a journalist. I had a journalist friend once, asking questions just like you." That was what Sarah Jane was still doing as far as he was aware. Good old Sarah. The Doctor drew in a breath. "I look like a human because that's what my species look like; I might as well be asking you why you look like one of my kind." He looked at her straight. "I'm a Time Lord and, to answer another of your questions, I come from Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous." To try and lighten his own mood as well as Sunshine's, he joked, "I'm not from Mars. I got accused of being from Mars once. Martians don't look a thing like me." Regardless, perhaps he had joked because even he had become aware of the heaviness to his gaze, the heaviness that always came when he talked about Gallifrey. It stirred up painful memories. The Fall of Arcadia, one of Gallifrey's cities second only to the Citadel itself, was something that he would probably never recover from. "The TARDIS," he added, looking towards the door as though he had x-ray vision and could see through it all to see his beloved ship from here, "As it is called, needs six pilots. I manage just fine on my own." The Doctor made a face. "Most of the time, that is."   
  
"As for my hearts, I can live with one for a short time but I couldn't be in peak condition nor could I stay like that for long. And if both hearts failed I'd need CPR on both." He had had to have that once on a hospital that had been transported to the moon - he had been surrounded by medical students, one medical student in particular as well, but they hadn't really known what to do with him and it was only through blind luck that he had gotten CPR on both hearts. Another irritating thing about being the last of your kind - when you got sick the humans around you didn't know what to do. Over Christmas one year he had spent the entire day in bed with only one heart keeping him going because his companion, then, didn't know what to do after he had regenerated and collapsed soon after taking her home to London! He had meant to provide some sort of medical manual to have on the TARDIS so if he collapsed or something his companions would be able to help him, though something in him objected to having a health leaflet like some sort of pet rabbit. Dragging himself away from his thoughts the Doctor looked towards Sunshine, looking to see her reaction first to his first questions before anything else was said. If she was happy with that he had said he'd continue, but he wanted to gauge her reaction first.

* * *

 "You're welcome." Sunshine said simply, re-positioning herself so she was in her previous sitting position, knees drawn up under her chin.

The Doctor began speaking again, this time about his people again. What kind of people were those? Aliens, of course, but what kind was what really interested Sunshine.

"I see. How old are your people, then? Millions, billions of years older than we mere humans, I assume? They sound smart. Probably smarter than us, if they figured out Euclid's method that long ago." Sunshine said softly, raising her eyebrows as she spoke. Her chin was now resting on her knees, her arms wrapped around her shins. What he said next made her widen her eyes, not in surprise or shock, but in questioning.

" _Good to see we're seeing eye to eye, Sunshine. At last._ " Sunshine jutted her bottom teeth out a bit as she thought of how to respond, grinding her front teeth together.

"Yes, finally. Of course, I have a feeling we're not going to stay this way for a while. You're a bit too nice for my liking. No sarcasm or anything. I'm not fond of people who are constantly happy and upbeat and friendly about everything, even when they're, say, bleeding." Once more, Sunshine's eyes flickered to where the band-aid lay now, plastered on his cut. "Regardless, I'm glad we're not having a passive aggressive argument of wits any more." Sunshine added after a pause, before allowing him to speak again. This time, his comment about her being a journalist managed to get an amused snicker out of her. "No. No, I'm not a writer. I'm a teacher, through and through. I just like asking questions because I like to know how things work, what goes on inside someone's head. Call it a hobby, if you will. What was this journalist friend's name?" Sunshine paused abruptly as the Doctor began to speak again - though Sunshine often spoke so much and with such rapidity that it was a miracle if you got a word in edgewise, if you started speaking, she would fall silent instantly, as if she was mortified at the prospect of talking over someone even for a second, even if she often didn't allow people to talk with her sudden streams of questions.

" _I'm a Time Lord and, to answer another of your questions, I come from Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous._ " Sunshine thought about his words for a few moments.

"Time Lord." She echoed after a few moments. "Sounds cool." Sunshine added, before the Doctor said something about Martians. "Of course you're not from Mars, anyone can tell the difference. What do Martians look like, then?" Sunshine said, a hint of amusement entering her voice. She bit the inside of her cheek as he started speaking about his spaceship, which was apparently called the TARDIS. "I'm assuming TARDIS stands for something? Why are you on your own, if it's supposed to be piloted by six? You didn't answer why you crashed, why did you?" Sunshine couldn't help but ask more questions, even though the poor Doctor just had to go through the trouble of separating and then answering her previous rapid-fire questions.

 

 


	13. the beginning, part 13.

Sunshine was, rather predictably, asking more about the Time Lords and the Gallifreyans. She asked how old they were, and once again the Doctor ruffled his hair with one hand as he thought. "A few million years older than humanity," he said, making a tipping gesture with his other hand to indicate that he wasn't exactly sure. She mentioned that they 'sounded smart' and he nodded. "Very. The majority of Gallifreyans are academics."Or they were once they graduated from the Academy after centuries of learning about time travel and studying the video of the death of a cro-magnon man who was squashed by a mammoth, which became a fixed point in time for no readily apparent reason and was shown to the young Time lords in training when they weren't doing recreational mathematics and looking at happy primes. Any Time Lord under the age of two hundred years was still a kid...still having rovies as pets and reading Every Gallifreyan Child's Pop-Up Book of Nasty Creatures From Other Dimensions at bedtime. The thought weighed heavily on the Doctor as he sat there, stretched out on the mattress with his back to the wall in the middle of a school's nurse's office. Still just a TARDIS ride away, he thought bitterly. Just a ride away. All of that culture, the history, the society - he wanted to think it was out there somewhere. But it wasn't, and he knew that full well. They weren't just a TARDIS ride away - none of it was, Gallifrey and the nightmare of the last days of the Time War with the Nightmare Child, Arcadia, the Citadel, and the sky trenches that had ultimately failed. Over a million battle TARDISes fighting over ten million Dalek saucers in as many time periods you could think of....and two point four seven billion children, stuck in the way. "Time Lords live longer than almost anything in the universe." Perhaps too long.  
  
Sunshine had a lot to say regarding their 'seeing eye to eye' as the Doctor himself had described it. " _Yes, finally. Of course, I have a feeling we're not going to stay this way for a while._ " The Doctor raised an eyebrow. " _You're a bit too nice for my liking. No sarcasm or anything. I'm not fond of people who are constantly happy and upbeat and friendly about everything, even when they're, say, bleeding._ " 

"I could wail and gnash my teeth at the cruelty of fate for giving me such a wound if that would be more to your satisfaction," he said, deadpan. " _Regardless, I'm glad we're not having a passive aggressive argument of wits any more._ " Well, that was something. When the Doctor had first met Sunshine it had felt like he was going to have a difficult time ahead, but they seemed to have reached some sort of common ground. It was funny - what could drive some people away, in the sense of telling others he was in fact an alien, could being other people to a more agreeable state, such as Sunshine in front of him right now. Having told her he wasn't exactly of this Earth she seemed far more happy to listen to him. The Doctor wondered what time it was, though there was no clock in the office for him to look at. It must've been getting late, but Sun had no intention of going home, apparently. He supposed it wasn't every day an alien crashed on your car and then sat on a mattress with a plaster to his head. Sunshine started talking about how she liked asking questions because she just liked to know how things worked and what went on inside someone else's head. "Her name was Sarah Jane. I travelled with her in the 1970s." Was it the 1970s? He remembered it as being that, but he'd lived for nine hundred years and some things did inevitably slip in his memory. It was even more confusing given that this body was old enough to have been born during that time - he would've been if he were human with this face.   
  
Apparently being a Time Lord 'sounded cool'. Well, the Doctor supposed it was. There wasn't really any bad points about being called a lord of time, though he could also call himself a Gallifreyan by rights as well. He had once been told that if he had been classified by the human method of classifying species he would've been known as a Dominus temporis, literally meaning in the original Latin Master of time. It was easy for something like that to go to your head; the Doctor had known plenty of the Time Lords who started to get a bit above themselves. It was a class one offence back on Gallifrey for any Time Lord to be found treating themselves as gods on any planet, especially a primitive one, but it hadn't stopped many Gallifreyans trying to do that anyway. At least the human race weren't calling themselves the masters of earth or air or water or something - human beings were the same. Some individuals just couldn't be trusted with titles of any kind. Give them a title and they think the world owes them everything, not just a living. "Of course you're not from Mars, anyone can tell the difference. What do Martians look like, then?" The Doctor was roused from his thoughts as Sunshine asked her question, one of many that evening. "Reptilian," he responded. "Or the Ice Warriors do anyway. There's another species on Mars called the Flood, but they're not too friendly." Ice Warriors you could reason with - the Flood, not so much.   
  
"'TARDIS' stands for 'Time And Relative Dimension In Space'," the Doctor explained patiently. "I am on my own because I prefer it that way."That was the best way to refer to it - he preferred it that way. Of course he did. Even when the Time Lords had been alive he had preferred to pilot the TARDIS alone, so he supposed that this statement was at least half true. "As for your other questions, I am nine hundred years old, give or take." He gave a wry smile. "Anti-wrinkle cream does wonders. I've crashed at too many places to mention and there are too many other species that to you are 'aliens' to list. They've visited Earth before, though I've got friends who keep it quiet whilst I talk with them." Talk was one thing. Perhaps another word he should've used was deal with them as that was what he often needed to do when the aliens were intent on destroying the Earth or enslaving it's people. He hadn't ever intended to become Earth's protector but that was what he was now. Even UNIT and Torchwood looked to him for answers even when he wasn't even the same species as them; whenever anything happened he was always in the action. The Doctor just liked the human race too much to let them fight their own battles. "And you just call me 'the Doctor' or 'Doctor'." He shifted where he sat. "Finally, I crashed because I was being chased." The Time Lord looked up to the ceiling, as though he could see right through it all up to the sky. "They're gone now I think, they'll be trying to track me down so that gives me some time to fix the TARDIS and move off."Half in thought he just started thinking aloud, mentioning things as he thought of them. "I won't be here long, enough to temporarily patch the old girl up and then I'll park somewhere, probably on Calypso Nine." He glanced towards Sunshine. "Ice cream capital of the universe. Always wanted to go and the...people who were chasing me won't think to look there. They'll give up eventually, though I haven't checked the TARDIS yet so I don't even know if it's okay for even a temporary fix. I might be stranded like you lot for a change." At his last sentence there was a certain playful note to his tone.

* * *

 

"A few million years older than humanity." Sunshine couldn't help but stare at him for a few moments before voicing a small, whispery 'wow' under her breath. A few million years, she knew, was tiny in comparison to how long the universe had been around, but plus the millions of years the humans had been around, or at least a form of them, that many millions of years is an amazing, an almost incomprehensible developmental advantage on anything the humans might have, biologically, technologically or anything else. It did make Sunshine feel a little insignificant, making her return to the thought that she was just a speck of dust hurtling through space on a rather desolate hunk of rock. Still lost in her own thoughts, Sunshine faintly heard him say something about the majority of his people being academics. She didn't really hear him until he spoke once more after that.

" _Time Lords live longer than almost anything in the universe._ "

Sunshine raised her eyebrows and looked up at him. "That sounds.... that actually sounds a little lonely. I mean, you'd have other Time Lords, but I still think living for... that long, I guess, would drive me past the breaking point, I think I'd go insane. Everyone has to die eventually, and living for a long time, a long, long time, that's.... kind of breaking that rule, I guess. Regardless of whether or not you live for an almost infinite amount of time, you're going to die someday and you're only extending your life a little bit by living that long. I mean, maybe it's the soldier in me talking, but you're always more mortal than you would think you are. And everyone else is so, so mortal it's almost empowering."

Sunshine's eyes had gained this sort of far-away quality, as if she was staring at something just past the Doctor.

"It's almost funny, really. In a horribly sad, twisted way, it's almost funny. You never think you're going to have to kill someone, you think that you can just hide and wait for it to be over, but then... then you have to kill or be killed, and you.. you're selfish in battle, that's it. You get selfish and you save yourself, and then you think about how fragile your mortality is, how easily you can kill or be killed. You are so, so much more mortal than you want to believe. So much more mortal. And it's so, so... sad. It's so very sad, being so mortal. Especially when you can't do anything about it. For you, it's no different. You just live a little longer, but you're still so impossibly mortal, though you might not like to think so yourself." Sunshine's voice had gone to a murmur now, and she was squinting slightly at that empty space, as if she were reliving what she was saying. In a way, she was.

" _I could wail and gnash my teeth at the cruelty of fate for giving me such a wound if that would be more to your satisfaction._ " The Doctor's words pulled her out of the horrifying reverie she had put herself in, making her blink a few times, a little surprised at the slightly wet, teary feeling. She turned towards him and raised an eyebrow.

"Nice deadpan. I'm almost proud of you." Sunshine retorted, cracking a small smile as she spoke. She grew thoughtful once more as the Doctor spoke of Sarah Jane. Traveled, he said. Did he travel with people? Had he, too, suddenly burst into her life with no warning, or did he do it a bit more eloquently than crushing her car and falling out of a police box in a rather ungraceful manner? "What do you mean by traveled with? A companion of sorts, I would assume, but why?" Sunshine asked softly, moving her sitting position once more so she was sitting on her knees. He then began speaking of Ice Warriors and the Flood, which made Sunshine wrinkle her nose a bit. Neither sounded like particularly pleasant races, friendly or otherwise. Sunshine briefly wondered why neither of these races had visited Earth yet, before her mind went back to Christmas, and she realized that it was quite possible they already had. Funny, really, the unnatural things you forget, she thought. Almost as if you were trying to protect yourself from thinking too hard about something.

" _'TARDIS' stands for 'Time And Relative Dimension In Space,'_ " there was a small pause then, a small pause between statements. " _I am on my own because I prefer it that way._ " Sunshine thought about it for a moment.

"Well, you're not alone all the time. You said it yourself, you 'traveled' with Sarah Jane in 1970. Why aren't you with a... companion now?" Sunshine said after a rather sizable pause, her eyebrows knitted together as she thought. The next thing he said didn't take her by too much surprise - nine hundred years was a little older than what she had been expecting, yes, but he did say his people lived longer than almost anything in the whole universe. "You've aged gracefully." Sunshine chuckled softly, an inaudible chuckle that just laced her words. Sunshine waited this time, waited until he had finished speaking entirely before responding, as responding then waiting then responding was becoming a bit tedious for her.

"Who or what was chasing you? And why were they chasing you? Why'd you crash, specifically, like what went wrong?" Sunshine paused and then suddenly jerked her head up, her eyes suddenly sparked with a determination she hadn't shown in a long time. "You are not going to an ice cream capital without me. I know about you now, and I am most definitely going to an ice cream capital of the universe. You owe me something, a compensation for crushing my car. You are not going to the ice cream capital of the universe without me, the person who probably loves ice cream the most in the world." She said sharply, though her eyes were sparkling with amusement. "Besides, you're going to need somewhere to fix your TARDIS, and I have a really big, unused garage."

 

 


	14. the beginning, part 14.

The Doctor's mention of his race being a few million years older than humanity was something that set Sunshine off her balance a little bit; having heard this she just stared at him like he had said that he ate newborn puppies at breakfast every morning. To be honest the Doctor found this quite refreshing, given that up until this point Sun had taken everything in more or less like it was something that she heard every day. He knew that she had to have been amazed at what she was saying but she had been keeping it under wraps for now, probably internalising all of it...but his talk about his own species being around for several million years, well, that had definitely got a response out of her. Eventually she whispered a very small 'wow' under her breath, and at this a grin became to sidle onto the Doctor's face. That look of astonishment never did grow old. He had seen it on a thousand faces of the companions he had chosen and his friends and the ones whose families he had been adopted into here on Earth....the look of wonder when they realised that the universe was bigger than they had ever imagined it to be. It almost made the Doctor discover it all for himself all over again, since the first time he had clambered into the TARDIS when he had been in his late a hundreds or early two hundreds and seen the universe for the first time by himself. Every time he saw that particular look on someone's face....he remembered that for himself, and despite the eight hundred years or so that had passed he would always remember it.  
  
Sunshine was silent for a bit before she looked up at him and began to speak. " _That sounds...that actually sounds a little lonely,_ " she said. The Time Lord was silent, his face still as he listened. He didn't interrupt, not once. " _I mean, you'd have other Time Lords,_ " she said, and something in her tone made the Doctor swallow and have to lower his gaze, " _But I still think living for... that long, I guess, would drive me past the breaking point, I think I'd go insane._ " So many Time Lords have, the Doctor thought, glancing towards Sun, having found the strength to look at her again with unblinking eyes. The Daleks had an asylum; did it not occur to them that the Gallifreyans would have one too? He was still, all joking mannerisms from before definitely gone in his nature. Most people only saw the splendour in the universe, in the powers of his race; his planet had been called the Shining World of the Seven Systems, his species the Lords of Time itself. But Sunshine saw the heartache in it too. The Doctor had always thought that Time Lords lived too long, and perhaps here was his proof at last. Here was someone who knew what that was like without glamourising it, without gilding it all in gold leaf. "Everyone has to die eventually, and living for a long time, a long, long time, that's.... kind of breaking that rule, I guess. Regardless of whether or not you live for an almost infinite amount of time, you're going to die someday and you're only extending your life a little bit by living that long. I mean, maybe it's the soldier in me talking, but you're always more mortal than you would think you are. And everyone else is so, so mortal it's almost empowering." The Doctor was still silent though he had noticed that there was this faraway look in Sunshine's eyes, like she was looking through him and looking at something that she could see but he couldn't. Perhaps that was what had led to the Time Lords' downfall, after all; they had forgotten that they were mortal. Oh, they had several lives, they could live to over a thousand years....but if they weren't given the chance to regenerate, they were the same as any other species out there, and perhaps they had forgotten that. Rassilon certainly had, up at the High Council of the Time Lords as he had been at the height of the Last Great Time War. He had forgotten that he was mortal, had forgotten that a Dalek gun could just as easily kill himself as it could kill a human being. The Doctor's eyes could once again not meet Sunshine's and his gaze wandered across the office, taking in the notebooks, the chunky computer in the corner, the wall calendar with a picture of a cat on it.   
  
Sunshine still hadn't finished talking, still looking out past him. " _It's almost funny, really. In a horribly sad, twisted way, it's almost funny. You never think you're going to have to kill someone, you think that you can just hide and wait for it to be over, but then... then you have to kill or be killed, and you.. you're selfish in battle, that's it._ " Selfish. Oh, he knew what it was like to be selfish. When the boom of guns were going off around you, when the air was thick with smoke and all you could hear was the guns and the wailing children and the grating voices of the Daleks around you and the red, red, blood red robes of some fallen Gallifreyan, dying before your very eyes. "You see the devastation and you can't take it in," the Doctor muttered very quietly under his breath. " _You get selfish and you save yourself, and then you think about how fragile your mortality is, how easily you can kill or be killed. You are so, so much more mortal than you want to believe. So much more mortal._ " Rassilon had eventually found that out to his cost, when Gallifrey had fallen. Even regenerating was hard; it wasn't swapping a face like some Time Lords made it out to be. It hurt, it hurt so much, and then off would saunter a new man. He had done it so many times but he always forgot how much it ached, the agony...Sunshine's words floated past him for a bit and by now the Doctor was looking out to the distance too, seeing his own battle. it was only when she mentioned him that he glanced towards her again. "I was a soldier," he said quietly. "Once." Gallifreyans were as mortal as everyone else, they just knew how to make a deal with Death...but when Death didn't want to make a deal, if the conditions weren't right, then a dead Time Lord was a dead Time Lord. The Doctor blinked.  
  
And after all that, Sunshine gave a cheeky retort of her own and it was over and the moment was passed - a good thing for both of them, or so he thought. The Doctor's eyes glanced up at the ceiling in mock exasperation at her remark. "Almost proud? I've just come out to you as a nine hundred year old Time Lord extraterrestrial and you're almost proud I can do deadpan?" Was he imagining a sense of deepened trust between the two of them now, following their earlier exchange? She asked a question then as to why he travelled with a companion, and the Doctor shrugged. "As you said," he replied, "I get lonely." More lonely than she knew, being the last of his kind. It kept him grounded - it stopped him becoming like Rassilon and some part of him knew that full well. Even Donna had picked up on it once, telling him that he needed to find someone to 'stop him'. And then he had found Martha, and off he had gone with her. As a Time Lord it was easy to slip into arrogance...he did need someone to stop him, did need someone to keep him grounded. Not that he'd tell Sunshine that, of course. There was a pause for a moment and then he replied to her next question. "I'm not with a companion because my best friend had to go." The Gallifreyan tried to speak as though it didn't matter, as though he'd be able to see her again. Of course not. "She had to forget me." The Doctor went quiet for a bit, thinking. No more companions, he had said to himself. No more, because they kept getting hurt. Donna had become half human half Time Lord to save a dozen planets, Martha travelled over the world whilst her family were used as slaves, and Rose....Rose could never come back.   
  
" _You've aged gracefully._ " A smile tugged at the corner of the Doctor's mouth. "I swear by Nivea." She asked another question and the Doctor waited until she had finished, about to speak when she caught on to what he had said about Calypso Nine. He tactfully avoided her question about who was chasing him, instead purposely making a fuss about taking her to another planet. If she knew who was chasing him then that wouldn't be a good thing - the less she knew the better. "Me, take you with the TARDIS?" he said incredulously, and indeed there was a touch of genuine incredulousness in his tone. No more companions, he had said. And for good reason, of course. "I'd be out of my mind to do that! What do I look like, a taxi service for the human race?" Despite his harsh words there was an undertone of amusement in his speech. "Time Lords do better things than ferry around humans - but, wait," he said, stalling in his next mock rant. "Did you say you have a...garage?"

* * *

 

" _I was a soldier once._ "

Those words startled Sunshine a little. What sort of aliens needed an army? Who would they be fighting in the first place? What would they be fighting for? That last question, even Sunshine wasn't sure of. She knew that when she was serving, she had no idea what she was fighting for, but she knew that she would die in battle or she would live, but something would be missing. Compassion would be gone for the most part, solidified after having to shoot someone who might have been an innocent bystander, but got caught in the crossfire, caught in the cross-hairs of a gun.

"War is a funny thing, really. People think there's war, and then there's civil war, and they think one is generally worse than the other, but they're wrong. There's no such thing as just 'war,' it's all a civil war. Civil war, definition, a war between citizens of the same country. But it's so much bigger than that. In my case, it's the world against itself, and in yours... well, I don't know, and I'm guessing you don't want to talk about it, but no matter the context, it was living being against living being. Civil war." Sunshine murmured, averting her eyes to the hem of her jacket, which she began to pick at, loosening a stitch gently as she spoke. She remained silent for a long time now, waiting until he spoke again, which was a while.

" _Almost proud? I've just come out to you as a nine hundred year old Time Lord extraterrestrial and you're almost proud I can do deadpan?_ " Sunshine looked up from her jacket, giving a small smile. "Well, you've only done it once and it wasn't very impressive. You'll have to try harder." Sun chuckled weakly, although her thoughts were now clinging to war and violence. Not much she could do about that, really. She would just have to try to veer away from those thoughts as she spoke. "As you said, I get lonely." Sunshine waited for a little while then, thinking, and he spoke again.

" _I'm not with a companion because my best friend had to go._ " Oh. Well, that was rather sad and upsetting. Sunshine silently cursed herself for bringing up such sad topics like war and losing best friends. "I'm sorry. You should find someone else. Then you won't sit in mope around or feel lonely. And you won't think about them as much. It's kind of what I did. I became a teacher to forget what I'd done in the past. Instead of a companion, I've got twenty-four kids to take care of five days a week, six hours a day. Not ideal, but it works." Sunshine sat up a little straighter now, as she always did when she spoke of the kids she taught. She was quite proud of the children, and though she didn't notice it herself, she often let that pride seep through her voice. The next things the Doctor said amused her, the amount of indigence in his voice. It amused her to the point of getting a small snicker out of her.

"Oh, I'm sure you have better things to do than 'ferry around humans,' but your spaceship is broken down and you owe me a favor for crushing my car. That favor will be taken in the form of ice cream." Sunshine paused slightly. "Well, the garage isn't MINE, it's my brother's, but he's.... out at the moment, and I have a key to his house. And all of the doors in his house. I'm not supposed to have it, but he doesn't use it. Regardless, I'm staying there today anyway, so we can use the garage there. It'll be fairly unused now because of the car. That you crushed. You're never going to live that down." 

 


	15. the beginning, part 15.

The Doctor hadn't really intended to say anything about his own brief army career; it wasn't something he talked about very often, and for good reason. But what Sunshine was saying had struck a chord and his own admission that, indeed, he had been a soldier as well once came out almost of it's own accord, like it wasn't in his control. It had just slipped out, and for a moment or two he feared that Sunshine would start asking questions in her usual manner, that she'd get engrossed in the topic like she had with everything else he'd mentioned, like a little child listening to a story. The Doctor hadn't minded Sun's enthusiasm even for his own race, but one thing he didn't want was the war become like that for anyone, something to be trivialised, something to listen to as though it was long gone. Because it wasn't long gone, not for him. However long he lived, the Time War was still something real to him, something that really honestly felt like only a TARDIS ride away, and he wouldn't - he couldn't - let all of that suffering be dissolved into something worth only a campfire story. Thankfully, however, he didn't have to deny Sun any answers, as she didn't ask. Perhaps this wasn't too surprising given that she had been a soldier herself. She had to know what it was like, to be surrounded by pain and blood and guns.   
  
Having said that, she did comment on the war, saying it was a 'funny thing' and talking about wars and civil wars. The Doctor only listened, his brown eyes studying the teacher as she spoke. " _People think there's war, and then there's civil war, and they think one is generally worse than the other, but they're wrong. There's no such thing as just 'war,' it's all a civil war. Civil war, definition, a war between citizens of the same country. But it's so much bigger than that._ " Well, she hadn't gone wrong there. War was war, regardless of whether it was fought by two people in the same country or the same world or between entire races. Before the Doctor had been in a war, he had passed them off, thought that only idiots would brew up a war, that only idiots would fight. But being in the Last Great Time War....it had changed him, both inside and out. It had left him angry and ashamed and fearful and now, looking back, he could see why war was a terrible, terrible thing, more terrible than anyone who hadn't been in a war could ever imagine. Sunshine was talking about how her world fought itself in their wars, in Earth's wars, before she expressed ignorance about his own and correctly guessed that he wasn't very fond of talking about it. The Time Lord only gave silence as a response, his eyes still averted and looking elsewhere. His war had been a war for the universe, a war stretching backwards and forwards in time, in a million places at once...but war was war. War was war was war.  
  
Sunshine's chuckled response was one that was weaker than it should have been; perhaps it was obvious that the topic of war hadn't done much for their senses of humour. It had certainly dampened the mood. The Doctor managed a little chuckle of his own, but it wasn't like there was much to laugh about, now they both knew that they had both been soldiers once upon a time, had both seen and lived through a battle, a war, a conflict. The mood wasn't exactly going in the right direction, and so the Doctor was glad that the topic soon moved on, albeit not into an exactly ideal topic. Sunshine was talking about how she became a teacher to escape it all, and the Doctor didn't blame her. War changed you, and in peacetime you had to get some sort of escape, had to find something to be passionate about. The Time Lord wasn't sure if he had anything to be passionate about. Wandering, perhaps. He was good at wandering. But not much else, not really, unless he wanted to unexpectedly and suddenly develop a passion for knitting. "I should," the Doctor agreed. "Just need the right person. I don't travel with just anyone." He glanced towards her then. Sunshine was passionate about the kids. Just the way she spoke about them said that to him. The pride in her voice...that wasn't something you could get by wandering the universe, alone and mopey, like he was doing. He shouldn't even be here.  
  
Perhaps that was why the Doctor was so happy to know that Sunshine had a garage. Well, technically not hers, but she was staying at her brother's house and he had a garage. The Time Lord looked towards Sunshine with the look of a little kid in his eyes that wanted a lollypop but didn't want to ask outright. "Big enough for," he said speculatively, "The TARDIS, maybe?" There was a slight teasing grin on the corner of his mouth as Sunshine went on, saying that his crashing on the car was something that he was 'never going to live down'. "I've done worse," he said casually, shrugging."Once landed in the middle of a Roman battleground. That was being fought on at the time." He gave a look to Sunshine. "Never again. I always check the monitor now after that incident, but this time I was trying my best not to get killed. You know how it is." He stayed silent on Sunshine's demand on going to Calypso Nine, instead ignoring it and hoping she'd drop the subject. He was still on the run from the Daleks and he didn't need anyone else to worry about. No; he was going to lie low and eat ice creams. That was the plan.

* * *

 Sunshine was glad to get off the topic of war, even if it was still lingering in the back of both of their heads. Sunshine could remember every detail perfectly - for the most part, she remembered hiding. Hiding and praying and crying, and then came the shooting, the shooting after she finished hiding and praying and crying. Sunshine had learned, to her displeasure, that she was very good with a gun after the last battle, THE battle, the one that happened before she got kicked out.

Sunshine was happy to get kicked out - shooting and hiding and praying and crying were never her style, but outright misconduct was. She was just grateful she didn't have to go to court for it. Now that she thought about it, even though she didn't want to, Sunshine cried quite a bit during battles. Of course, she never cried for very long, but usually towards the end she just kind of lost it.

" _Just need the right person. I don't travel with just anyone._ " Sunshine stared at him for a few moments, snapping out of the army-based reverie she had fallen under. "Oh? What kind of people do you travel with, then?" Sunshine asked, raising an eyebrow. In all honesty, regardless of her slightly uninterested tone, Sunshine was curious. Everyone had a certain type of person they preferred to be in company with, a certain set of personality traits that they valued over others. Sunshine liked opinionated people, but the trait she valued the most was that wonder, that imagination only children had.

To be entirely honest, Sunshine preferred children to adults. They were much less boring, and often offered more helpful advice than adults did. They, being children, that is, had a certain wondrous quality about them, eager to learn and eager to play, their heads filled with a boundless amount of imagination that faded once you got past a certain point in your lifetime, or you used that energy in something else, like art or music, or whatever your passion happened to be. Sunshine also liked storytellers. They were everything she wanted to be, able to invoke images with just a few words. And though Sunshine was excellent and telling stories, she was nowhere near her idols, if one can have.... idols for storytelling.

" _Big enough for the TARDIS, maybe?_ " Sunshine jumped a little when he spoke again. It startled her a little, she was so absorbed in her own thoughts. After a small delay, her brain processing what he had said after the Doctor jerked her out of her thoughts, Sunshine responded with a small nod. "Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Your police box, or TARDIS, or whatever you want to call it, isn't too big. The real difficulty will be getting it there. If it's not too horribly damaged, I guess we could try to fly it there. How'd it get damaged, anyway? You never answered that one, other than saying you were chased, but that doesn't count because you didn't tell my why you crashed. You told me how you crashed, or maybe it's the other way around. Did you lose a piece of something?"

 


	16. the beginning, part 16.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick chapter, leading up to the beginning of another part !

"Oh, just people," the Doctor said, shrugging. He was glad that they had gotten off the topic of war and into something a little more lighthearted, but he hadn't expected her to ask what kind of people he travelled with. "I just....pick up people. I don't plan it, it just happens." Well, that was true. He never planned to meet any of his companions; they had just been around at the right time and in the right place. It was more down to luck more than anything else. Rose he had met in the basement of Henrick's, a department store in London during the Auton attempted invasion, Martha in a hospital that was transported to the moon (and who also saved his life, which to be fair to her did get her brownie points if someone was counting) and Donna...well, Donna had shown up in his TARDIS in a wedding dress and had started screaming at him. It had been an accident, every time, but he didn't regret it at all; he had loved his time with every one of his companions, though his time with them was always short. Too short. Way too short, and somehow the quicker he found companions the quicker he lost them. Lost them in parallel worlds, lost them after a year that no one remembered, lost them when they became half Time Lord....they all went eventually. "Haven't got anyone now though. They've all gone."Rose and Donna he couldn't see again, and Martha was busy with her own life now, off at UNIT, being a doctor and doing what she did best.   
  
Sunshine appeared to have gone into her own little trance as he had been talking - she jumped a bit when he mentioned the TARDIS. He peered at her curiously, but she appeared to have caught up with the conversation as the next thing she did was nod. "Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Your police box, or TARDIS, or whatever you want to call it, isn't too big." "Knew I count on you, Sun," the Doctor said happily, glad to have found a safe place to keep the TARDIS for a little while. What she said next, however, was hardly something that he hadn't thought of himself. Her word choice, however, caught him by surprise. "'We'?" he questioned, a hint of indignation in his tone. "You know anything about flying her, do you?" More seriously, he added, "Nah, I'll try and fly her over. Shouldn't be too damaged...it was just some knocking about really, person who chased me gave me a bit of trouble." No need to tell her he had been fired at. "Considering your car's knackered, though," he said, looking towards Sunshine jokingly as though it was her fault, "I suppose you'll have to hitch a ride with me. Come on then, spit spot." And, with that, the Time Lord bounced off the mattress and headed to the door, already halfway into the corridor.

* * *

 

" _Oh, just people._ " Sunshine sighed internally. Could the Doctor be any more vague when answering any of her questions? Sunshine decided that no, he could not. That was one of the things Sunshine already disliked about the Doctor. He tried too hard to be mysterious, to leave things to interpretation sometimes. Though Sunshine didn't like overly-blunt people, she much preferred them to people who sugarcoated things or people, like the Doctor, tried to veil things in mystery, tried to make you think in ways you shouldn't have to. She didn't voice this, of course, but she thought it in a manner that one thinks to direct their thoughts towards someone, as if they could communicate with you telepathically.

"What happened to them? Why are they all gone?" Sunshine asked gently, not wanting to touch on any more sensitive subjects. " _Knew I count on you, Sun._ " Sunshine opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by the Doctor's next words. "Depends on how you fly her. Engineering is a hobby, after all. And yes, my car is just a bit horribly ruined, so I'm afraid I'll need a lift." Sunshine gave a sly, smug smile, the kind you give to let someone know you've won the argument, and stood up, dusting herself off. It was a bit amusing, really, how excited the Doctor seemed. He certainly could change his mood at the drop of a hat. Sunshine strode over to the door, turning the handle and swinging it open. "Aliens first." She said, gesturing to the door with a small smile. She was warming up to the Doctor - despite his vague nature and occasional arrogance and his almost over-bearing positive nature (or, at least, most of the time,) not to mention the fact that he was, to put it bluntly, an alien, he seemed okay. Sunshine was content for once, truly content for the first time in a while.

 


	17. the beginning, part 17.

Sunshine had asked where all of his companions had gone, though the Doctor hoped that his energetic and rather sprightly reaction to learning of her brother's garage was something that had quickly turned her attention away from such a topic. It wasn't really something he wanted to talk about; although he had been talking to Sunshine for quite a while, he wasn't intending to let loose his heart and soul, as it were, and considering that she was only helping him out there was no need to tell her things that she quite frankly didn't need to know and wasn't ever going to know. It wasn't like he was picking up another companion at some point, anyway. He was done with that - with risking the lives of his friends, of his friends who however much he had done to try and save them somehow managed to leave him. He had done that over and over again and, really, whenever he had heard any of his newfound human friends - or not so human at times; he'd travelled with two androids once at different periods, now they really had been quite unique - that they wanted to be with him forever, he simply thought that forever would never come. Something would happen and they would go, would be forced to abandon him or to forget him or to even die for him. He was done with that, and he was determined that it was never going to happen again. So no, it wasn't something he wanted to talk to Sunshine about, and perhaps the prospect of flying in the TARDIS was enough to distract her from asking again. He should never really have raised the topic for discussion....he hadn't, really, but Sunshine had bit down on the idea like a dog on a bone and since then there hadn't been much he could do. But it wasn't open for discussion anymore, and he hoped that Sunshine would see that just as she had seen that he didn't want to talk about the war he was in, not in detail. In fact he was feeling less talkative by the second, though he hid it well with his jovial nature that he could switch on and off like a light switch. The Doctor just needed to be in the TARDIS, fixing her and going off and going back to flying around the universe. He had no intention of taking Sunshine to Calypso Nine, not at all. Sunshine had been right; he was lonely. But it was better than loosing yet another friend to what appeared to be at random fling of the dice from fate.   
  
"Lift it is," the Doctor said, just as Sunshine went to open the door to let him pass. " _Aliens first._ " He glanced at her. "You're the alien to me," he complained, though he went through just the same. "Come on then - allons-y," came an added shout from down the corridor as he strode quickly and with a certain purpose out of the school, going down the corridor and opening the door they had come from. He waited a millisecond for Sunshine to catch up a little before striding out into the late evening. The sun was properly setting now and it was beginning to get dark, though the TARDIS - and the wreckage that was Sunshine's dearly departed car, may the twisted hunk of metal always rest in peace - was easy to see in the gentle twilight gloom and it wasn't like the two of them had long to walk anyway. A brisk wind was picking up and it picked at the ends of the Doctor's brown coat like a little child tugging at a parent's hand as he waited for Sunshine to catch up. He dug into his coat pocket and took out the sonic screwdriver, releasing the TARDIS from the perception filter that she had been under whilst he had been inside. He never used to really mind letting the TARDIS sit by herself and indeed he usually didn't care at all - as long as she stayed put there was usually no need for such measures. However, considering she was weakened given that the power was almost gone and she was at a rather precarious angle which could invite any school kid who was lingering around the building something curious to look at....well, there was no such thing as being too careful. A buzz of the sonic screwdriver later and the filter was taken away and the Doctor put the screwdriver back into his coat where he usually kept it.   
  
The Doctor looked over to the TARDIS. The doors were half open - he hadn't shut them before, he noted. Or maybe he had and he just hadn't shut them properly and they'd slightly opened again as he had walked away towards the school. "Now, I don't want you touching anything," he called out behind him, expecting that Sunshine was approaching or was near enough to hear. "Don't touch anything and don't press any big buttons. Or levers. Or anything that even remotely looks like it controls something." Last thing they needed was the TARDIS flinging them into Victorian England and having a ridiculously small amount of power left, possibly not for a trip back. He could live through the Victorian era and every other era following as long as he didn't bump into another version of himself but Sunshine certainly couldn't. He strolled up to the TARDIS, his hand on the door. "And there's going to be all sorts of things lingering about because it was a rough ride. Don't touch any of that, either. In fact," he added,"Just stand somewhere and hold on and let me get us where we need to be." Perhaps he was angry at himself, for letting Sunshine know so much about him, but yet he couldn't help letting out the odd thing. Something about Sunshine made him trust her and perhaps there was a part of the Time Lord that didn't know what it was and didn't like the effect it was having on him - that he was touching on topics that he didn't want to touch on and wouldn't usually. It had all come spilling out him and he was just glad he had had the wit not to let out anything else. The way he had been going she'd have known he was the last of his kind, that the TARDIS was the last of hers, that he had killed them all....it had almost been like he had been under a sort of sway, all of that talk of war and blood and loss. And it would stop.

* * *

 

Sunshine was a little hesitant on following him - once more, distractions of adrenaline and questions were gone, replaced by a gut-wrenching feeling of fear and uncertainty. What if he was lying? What if he was, in fact, hostile? Sunshine was pretty sure a knife wouldn't do any good against an alien, Time Lord or otherwise. In fact, Sunshine was wishing this was only a dream, that she would wake up in a few moments and nothing would be wrong, then she would get ready and go to school and teach math and reading and everything else, and make sure Dalia didn't get into another fistfight with Clarence because he tripped her at lunch, and sigh softly at the four consecutive D's on Sam's report card, then grade papers and go home and there would be no blue boxes or aliens to be found. That was what Sunshine wanted now, though it wasn't so much the simplicity of yesterday and earlier today that she wanted, she realized. No, she wanted the thing that had been keeping her grounded for the last few years, since the war. Sunshine wanted the kids, her kids, to keep her mind from straying to dark places, like war and insignificance in the vast and certainly not empty universe.

" _Come on then - allons-y._ " The shout startled Sunshine out of her thoughts, making her break into jog after the Doctor without thinking. "Where did you learn how to say 'let's go' in French?" She chuckled faintly as she caught up to him, burying the new uncertainty and longing for the children she taught under a chuckle. A good skill to have, she thought, burying your fear or sadness under a joke. Albeit, a bad and emotionally unhealthy habit, but a good skill to have nonetheless.

Sunshine shuddered a little at the wave of cold air that greeted her as she and the Doctor left the school. She zipped her jacket up to her chin, craning her neck to look up at the sky. It was night now, properly night. The stars blinked above her, and for a few seconds, Sunshine stopped and stood there in front of the school, staring up at the flickering, far off suns of the night. An overwhelming sensation of something important about to happen suddenly washed over her as she stared up at the stars, the feeling of something important and smile worthy about to happen. She stood there for about thirty seconds, staring into space and just.. standing, until she slowly turned around, dragging her eyes away from the sky, and dashed after the Doctor, who was now talking about not touching anything, then about just standing in a corner and not doing anything. "Sir, yes, sir," Sunshine said jokingly, raising her eyebrows slightly, but the words fell off her tongue far too easily. She was used to saying them, so used to it that she subconsciously straightened her back while she spoke, even giving a small two-fingered salute. She didn't even notice she had done it, not even a few seconds, or even minutes after.

This also may have been because she was distracted by the TARDIS - who wouldn't? Sunshine's eyes widened slightly as the door swung open, or more than it had been before. That was it - that was the big, huge, important moment Sunshine had been waiting for... well, for years at this point. She couldn't really help it - after the initial look of wonder on her face, she simply broke into a smile. The kind of smile that's more of a grin, really, bared teeth and all, and the kind of smile that makes your face hurt after a while. The thing about Sunshine was that when she did smile, she radiated. She was one of those people who you look at when they're smiling and you think, 'that person is GLOWING.' And you can't really help but be jealous, unless you are one of the people who glow when they grin. Of course, you wouldn't know it. You never do. And the thing about Sunshine's smile in particular was that it was infectious, regardless of how you felt about her as a person. If Sunshine smiled like the sun was between her teeth, you couldn't help but do it too. And Sunshine was truly excited now - the doubt had been shoved to the back of her mind, replaced by an awestruck wonder and happiness that expressed itself with a smile, a grin for the first time in years.

 

 


	18. the beginning, part 18.

Sunshine had followed him at a jog and had now caught up with him, the two of them strolling across the tarmac outside to where his TARDIS was and, too, where her car had been only an hour or so ago. The sight of the crumpled metal did make twinges of guilt vibrate softly in the corners of the Doctor's thoughts - after all, this was a teacher, not a millionaire and unlike him humans did need cars to get around - but he was soon distracted by another of Sunshine's questions. He was glad that this one was relatively lighthearted; both of them, clearly, had seen the need to move on from the heavy topics of before to stray into more lighthearted and shallower waters. "Where? I've been everywhere," he had said, glancing towards her. "When you get around a lot you can speak all the languages." And even if he didn't speak a language the TARDIS usually translated anyway. He could be speaking Old High Gallifreyan and it would still come across to Sunshine as though he was speaking good old plain English. He stuck with English, though, especially since the TARDIS was wounded. Her translating system might have been knocked out in the Dalek chase and then things would have gotten very, very awkward. Having said that, he rarely spoke Old High Gallifreyan anyway, or even just Gallifreyan, the modern version of the older language. There wasn't any point when he knew that no one would respond in his mother tongue, not any more.   
  
They had gotten to the TARDIS at this point and they were standing outside the doors. The TARDIS had dropped out of the sky at an angle - not a huge angle, not horizontal at least, but enough to mean that the Doctor, and Sunshine by extension, would have to hoist themselves up by holding on to the blue wood on either side of the doors and stepping very gingerly and very, very carefully on the twisted metal of the car which would have been, once upon a time, one of the car doors. The car was beyond help and so neither of them, the Doctor thought, would care what happened to it if they used it as a step to get up to the TARDIS, but the TARDIS was his ship and he wasn't going to have her injured in any way, shape or form. That wasn't on the cards and so out the instructions had come, not to touch anything, not to do anything, to perhaps not even breathe if it meant upsetting the TARDIS. She was already very picky towards who she liked - she had had to warm up to some of his friends that he had taken places - and now she was wounded, and anyone could be forgiven for being spiky when injured. The sprinklers would have been loud and noisy if they were on, so the fact they weren't meant that the fires must have died down, which was something - it would've been awkward to take Sunshine into a wreck still merrily burning and crackling away like a bonfire as they tried to park the TARDIS in her garage. He could be thankful for that, the Time Lord supposed; hopefully nothing had been burnt that was too valuable. Most of the time he was able to make do either with the stuff that the TARDIS had left inside her or he was able to make impromptu repairs using anything from a rubber duck (which he couldn't use now, as most of them were bobbing past Amelia Earhart's crashed plane) to an old fashioned car horn, but if it was anything too serious that was damaged then there wasn't much he could do. It wasn't like he could whizz on home and pick up some repair stuff, and even if he did as a renegade he wasn't exactly going to be welcome....  
  
" _Sir yes sir._ " The words roused the Doctor from his thoughts and he frowned. "Sir?" he said in surprise, having not expected this from Sunshine of all people. She didn't seem the type to call anyone 'sir' - those days, he had understood, were well and truly done with and not something that she wanted to repeat, but yet here she was. Hopefully she was trying to inject a bit of humour into the situation, but regardless the Doctor frowned on any use of the word 'sir' in reference to him. That was what the UNIT people were always trying to call him, and when they weren't doing that they were wearing scarves similar to the pattern on his suit (Malcolm Taylor, he recalled, had done such a thing) or otherwise serving as his fan club. He didn't need any of that. "You don't call me 'sir'," he said irritably, turning around. "You call me 'the' - " He was cut off as he saw the beam on Sunshine's face, the look on her face of pure joy and excitement. She was like a little kid opening the door to find presents under the Christmas tree - more than that, actually, as she looked like she had seen Father Christmas himself (which she perhaps had done, as the Doctor had stood in for Father Christmas one year in '43 - or was it '44 - when he had been sick with flu, but that was irrelevant for now). He had never seen her smile before....before it had just been snickers and the occasional small smile, but this was something else. This was something else entirely, and the Doctor felt a particular tug at the corner of his own mouth as though he was about to burst into a smile too, something that was ridiculous considering his current mood but something that he almost couldn't help doing. The Doctor leaned over and pushed open the door of the TARDIS. He wasn't all hard. "Humans first."

* * *

 

" _Where? I've been everywhere._ " This answer didn't surprise Sunshine too much. From what she had gathered, the Doctor was a bit of a wanderer, and judging by the fact he was nine hundred years old, he had probably, in fact, been just about everywhere. She did wonder, however if he was fluent in French, aside from saying 'allons-y.' Sunshine could speak some French, but the language she was most fluent with, (other than English, of course,) was Korean, and she only knew than because her grandmother and her mother spoke it on occasion, and taught her some of it. She could say some phrases and speak without breaks, but there wasn't a whole lot she did with the language. Of course, almost nobody she met understood it.

"Neat. I've always wanted to travel, what's it like?" Sunshine asked softly before turning her attention to the wreck that was previously her car. She knew she could stand on it - she had done it before when it was in this condition, when she had first gone to see what or who was in the police box that had lodged itself in her car, but she wasn't sure if it could hold her and the Doctor now, plus the added danger of the fact that it was dark now, easier to fall off, easier to get hurt. She felt a twinge of unease looking at the silhouetted form of her car in spite of herself, in spite of the excitement slowly building in her. She gently climbed up onto the car, gingerly stepping around the shattered glass of her back window, wincing a little at the sight. She had loved her car, of course, as it had been a birthday present on her twentieth. A little more than late, yes, but she still loved it even though it was six years old at this point. It still held - or at least, it had held - some sentimental value to her, but now that it was completely and totally destroyed, with probably no hope of fixing it, she would have to get a new one, this time with preferably less sentimental value this time.

" _Sir?_ " Sunshine jumped a little at the Doctor's words, suddenly roused from her small daze. "What?" She said softly, raising her eyebrows. She still wasn't aware that she had said anything like that, and she was too focused on the excitement building inside her. That said excitement only peaked as soon as the Doctor opened the door, the smile widening on her face into a full-blown grin. " _Humans first._ " Sunshine looked over at the Doctor, a look of giddy, childlike excitement crossing her face. "Don't mind if I do." She murmured, sliding through the doors, the excited grin still on her face, despite the clutter from the TARDIS being tossed around. She couldn't help but slide around the control panel, daintily ignoring the slightly charred floor and bending down to look at the levers and buttons, her grin going from excited to amused, gently running a finger along the edge. Or, at least, she grinned for a few moments before she remembered the Doctor's instructions and hastily backed away from the control panel, the smile fading a bit. Sunshine's smiles never lasted too long, but they were pretty memorable if she ever did smile. Right now, she was just concerned she had upset the Doctor by even touching the control panel, and she didn't like the thought of that.

 


	19. the beginning, part 19.

Sunshine climbed into the TARDIS and as she did so the Doctor followed quickly, heaving himself up by standing on the ruined wreck of the car and clambering in. What he saw wasn't exactly pretty - the control room was a bit of a mess. Well, you could call it a bit if you wanted to be delicate, if you wanted to ignore the boxes strewn across the floor from where they had come from deeper inside the TARDIS (the box room, he thought, though one box he knew was full of old tech that belonged in the lab) and if you wanted to ignore the slightly charred floor. Again, if you wanted to be nice, you could say the TARDIS had a distressed look...in an in-fashion sort of way. But that was only if you wanted to be delicate, and the Doctor, with himself at least, was not delicate in the slightest when it came to accepting the gravity of a situation. His brown eyes looked around the control room with dismay and one hand automatically went out to touch the nearest coral structure nearby as though he was trying to soothe both the TARDIS and himself. He could feel the TARDIS' injuries himself and he stroked his ship soothingly, barely audible words slipping out of his mouth in his mother tongue, whispered under his breath, as he felt the rough texture of the coral under his hand. Hopefully the damage wouldn't be too hard to fix but even so, the TARDIS had had a rough ride....and so had he. The Time Lord ran his hand across the coral structure. Although it would have been almost impossible for any human being or any other species to detect he could sense the TARDIS herself almost moving her consciousness towards him, moving close to the only Gallifreyan she knew. But there weren't only Gallifreyans here, and something was rolling across the deck towards him, rousing him from his fugue -   
  
\- It was a purple ball, perfectly round and made of perfect crystal without even a bump or blemish from the rough ride. But that was because it wasn't just an ordinary ball and that simply wasn't all it was, and as the Doctor picked it up with his hand and stared into it he could see the three Carrionites he had imprisoned there quietly screaming at him as they had been for, hmm - the Doctor checked his watch - a few years now. Well, he reflected, he had stopped them from slipping from the void that the Eternals had locked them in into Shakespearian England. "Not so fast," he muttered, tapping the glass with one finger, and thus angering the two Mothers and Lilith more, before slipping the crystal into the nearest box. Having done this he glanced up at Sunshine, who was running her finger across the console. He still had his hand on the TARDIS coral and he could almost feel her cringing away from the touch, like an animal would after receiving a wound. However, as quickly as he had noticed that she was doing this Sunshine drew her hand away, much to the Doctor's and the TARDIS' relief. He was surprised that she hadn't mentioned that it was bigger on the inside yet....it was sure to be said, given that was what everyone said. And then she'd go out and look round the TARDIS before coming back, disbelief etched over her face, and he'd, not without a little pride, would fly them off to far flung places and places hundreds of thousands of worlds away.....  
  
Or he would have done. But this trip was only to get Sunshine to her home and him and the TARDIS to her garage where he could repair the TARDIS properly. As grateful as he was for being allowed to use her garage he firmly reminded himself that this wasn't going to lead to anything and that as soon as the TARDIS was fixed he'd be away, off to lead the Daleks on a wild goose chase maybe by leaving a few red herrings here and there before heading to Calypso Nine to hide out. With this in mind perhaps it could be said that he was putting Sunshine in danger by living under her roof for a bit, but the Daleks would take a few days just to track him down and as long as he spread a few red herrings around - put up a realistic hologram here and there, appeared at such and such planet just to get someone influential with the Daleks to see him to raise the alarm to the Daleks before heading off again - they wouldn't dare to check there. Why would a Time Lord hang around in someone's garage anyway? It would seem incredibly unlikely and Sunshine would be safe. He had no intention of putting anyone in danger. And so he took his hand away from the TARDIS and moved up to the console, moving boxes out of the way as he did so. By the time he had gotten to the console and to the glimmering tower of blue light and engines at it's centre most of the boxes were out of the way allowing for free movement. The Doctor very gently placed his hands on his machine, moving around with less of the energy than he usually exhibited. He flicked a few switches and moved a few dials before looking towards Sunshine."Where do you live?" he asked. Without giving her time to respond he added quickly, "You might want to sit down or cling onto something - gently." The Doctor pulled a lever and looked back at her, evidently not a hundred percent trusting her. "If something looks fragile don't touch it."Despite her endearing smile the Time Lord wasn't entirely sure about her and he had given a bit too much information about himself earlier - or for him he did; for others it probably wouldn't have been so bad as he had been rather vague about some things, but still - to make him feel comfortable. His TARDIS was clearly his first priority.

* * *

 

Sunshine had stopped smiling now. She was just looking around, hand gripping the railing tightly. She didn't really notice when she stopped smiling - she kind of just did. After this, however, she had decided something. More than one smile, more than one big and important event in her life. Smiling felt good, she supposed, but really, they meant almost nothing if you did them too much. Smiles were pointless, aside from the sarcastic and small ones Sunshine gave on a daily basis. Those little ones were fine, insignificant. They didn't happen when something important happened.

Of course, this was pretty amazing. Bigger on the inside. Cooler-looking on the inside, not to mention. The thing that she wanted to do most right now, as she was looking around from where she stood, was explore. It wasn't too unreasonable to assume that this... what had he called it, TARDIS, had more than one room, given the size. "How big is this thing? On the inside, I mean, does it have more than one room?" Sunshine said after a few minutes of silence, raising her eyebrows to look at the Doctor. It was only then that she really realized how messy the interior of the police box was. She didn't know why she had missed it before, really, but she had. Of course, mess was to be expected if you had just crashed from.... where HAD the Doctor crashed from? Space, or just the sky? Why had he chosen Earth, certainly there were better planets to have crashed onto, ones with less knife-wielding schoolteachers, maybe. Of course, on Earth, Sunshine hadn't met many other knife-wielding schoolteachers like herself, and she didn't think it was common for people to have a Swiss army knife taped to the inside of their boot, just in case something happened.

" _Where do you live?_ " Sunshine jerked a little as she was forced out of thoughts of what kind of rooms were in the TARDIS and whether or not people carried knives in their boots as the Doctor asked her a question. Her mind went blank for a few second before she managed to stutter out the address. Sunshine didn't do well when people asked her a question that required her to jump out and away from her thoughts or daydreams, and often had to think for a few moments on a decision or answer that would usually take less than a half the time it takes her after too many minutes of delving too deep into her own thoughts. " _If something looks fragile don't touch it._ " Sunshine snickered a little at that, raising her eyebrows. "Hate to break it to you, pal, but everything in here looks a little fragile, including you. I'm not a kid, you know, I'm not gonna go wild and start shaking everything I see. I can handle myself. Matter of fact, I think I'm a little too shell-shocked by the fact your box is bigger on the inside to go looking at everything littering the floor."

 


	20. the beginning, part 20.

"How big?" the Doctor echoed, poised by the console. Ordinarily he'd lean upon the console and the controls but again there was the sense that the TARDIS was one big wounded animal so he supported his own weight with only one hand resting on one of the TARDIS' levers. "It has more than one room," he said, with the tone of someone who thought that it was obvious. Considering that he had one room impossibly fitted into the tiny police box exterior, he would have thought it obvious that he'd be able to squeeze a few others in alongside it. As for how many rooms, though....the other hand not resting gently on the console ruffled his hair as he thought. "I don't know how many rooms. Adding up squash rooms one to seven, the swimming pool, the library, the walk-in wardrobe, the cloisters, sick bay, the aquarium, garage, spa, television room..." He counted them off on his fingers before he ran out of fingers to count on. "All you need to know is that the TARDIS fractures the surface of the Earth. Or it would if a bit of the old jiggery-pokery died out. Which it hasn't yet." Sometimes, when the Doctor needed some peace, he would wander through the TARDIS rooms, of which there were many. The library was always one of his favourite places, even if there was a specific desk that, no matter where it was moved, always got rained on by a cloud layer in the upper stacks - that and the garden. Of course most of the time the Doctor was running about saving people or planets or worlds or galaxies but when he wasn't, it was one of his favourite things to do. There were some places he didn't go, though, such as the old console rooms. Those were too full of memories for him, of companions long gone. And family, too. Sometimes it was easy to forget when looking at the Doctor that he had once been a parent, even a grandparent. Of course, he wasn't now, and probably would never be so again.   
  
Sunshine seemed to have gone into her own personal fugue for a bit - something she was prone to do, the Doctor noted; she had done it several times now - and it took her a second to say her own address. Almost instantly the Doctor turned more dials, telling the TARDIS via the monitor, which he swung towards him, to zone in on the area of the address with the most concrete; the area that was most likely going to be the garage, in other words. He had already crashed on Sun's car - he didn't want to smash her coffee table either. As he did so, he heard one of Sunshine's characteristic snickers. " _Hate to break it to you, pal,_ " she said as the Doctor looked up from what he was doing at the console, " _but everything in here looks a little fragile, including you. I'm not a kid, you know, I'm not gonna go wild and start shaking everything I see. I can handle myself. Matter of fact, I think I'm a little too shell-shocked by the fact your box is bigger on the inside to go looking at everything littering the floor._ " The Doctor looked rather affronted at her claim that he was 'fragile'. "I'm not fragile," he said indignantly, peeling off the plaster on his forehead and placing it into the bin hidden and tucked away under the console. "You humans are the ones that are fragile. You lot go down with a single shot to the head." Whereas, of course, he went down with two - but only if the other shot was fired during the regenerative process. If that happened, which was likely considering from a human's view he could be doing something threatening when regenerating and he'd be too busy deciding what colour his hair was going to be to reason with them, then he'd be just as deaded as a human. One shot, however, he could cope with - not that he'd want to though, considering he liked how he looked at the moment. "And if you can handle yourself, fine. Stay shell shocked if it means you don't touch anything." The Doctor flicked a few other dials to the right setting and grabbed hold of a long stick coming out from the bottom of one side of the console, pulling the knob on the end to take it in and out as though he was pumping something. Then he was running around to another area of the control room, setting a few switches to 'on' and tapping at things on the monitor. The displays were written in Gallifreyan - and not written Gallifreyan at that but instead circular Gallifreyan, with the characters circles with little holes cut out like a mouse had eaten from a wheel of cheese and stripes and other such distinctions, so to Sunshine they wouldn't have meant much, but to the Doctor they meant a good deal. They meant the difference between landing in Elizabethan England (then again, that wouldn't be too bad; Liz was still waiting to elope with him in a glade, so) and Sun's house, so he paid attention to them.  
  
At last it seemed like the Doctor had finished hurling himself around and pressing buttons and flicking switches and pulling levers, setting the TARDIS up for flight. He wasn't planning on flinging her around as he did normally, given the TARDIS still needed a bit of time to heal, and so had set up special shielding and so on and so forth to make the travel easier. It was partially for himself, too - he could feel what the TARDIS was feeling so it was for his best interests as well that he didn't fling them around. And it would be more chaotic than usual with all of these boxes...flying more gently was better. Of course, by the Doctor's standards, 'flying more gently' didn't mean going at 30 miles per hour like a car would do on the road. No - when time travelling, things were a little different....a lot different, in fact. The Doctor looked up at Sunshine. "Ready?" he asked, not expecting a reply before flipping the last switch and grabbing hold of the pair of old, knackered seats (where he had originally got them was a mystery even to himself) as the TARDIS surged into the time and space vortex. Several boxes were sliding around during the flight and the Time Lord, and Sunshine by extension, were forced to cling on for dear life as the TARDIS wheezed and groaned her way through space. The flight was wobbly even for the TARDIS, the Doctor noticed as he clung on, leaning over precariously from his place of safety on the chairs to have another go at a lever. This changed the tune of the TARDIS wheezing a little, almost as though the space and time machine, as it hurled through space, was being set for something. It was, in fact - it was stopping them from hurling themselves backwards and forwards in time, something that the Doctor didn't want happening as it would only make everything more confusing. No - he wanted to deliver them both in real time, without chucking themselves into Roman England or something similar.   
  
The TARDIS hurled them around for a little while longer, rocking the control room chaotically. However, not much time had passed when the TARDIS finally stilled and the pulse in the central column in the middle of the console calmed. There was the distant sound of some drum being beaten as the TARDIS landed - the same sound that the TARDIS always made whenever he landed, unless if he crash landed of course, and then the TARDIS was still and the rocking stopped. The Doctor, still clinging to the seat, exhaled sharply and dragged himself up from where he had been half sagging off the chair during the flight, checking for Sunshine. "We're here," he said rather unnecessarily. "You alright?"

* * *

 

" _I don't know how many rooms. Adding up squash rooms one to seven, the swimming pool, the library, the walk-in wardrobe, the cloisters, sick bay, the aquarium, garage, spa, television room..._ " Sunshine thought about his words after a few moments, listening to him continue to talk after that sentence.

"So. A lot. I don't think anyone uses the phrase 'jiggery-pokery,' regardless of the situation or time period. In fact, that is the first time I have ever heard someone say 'jiggery-pokery' in my entire life. What does this jiggery-pokery entail, exactly?" Sunshine returned to gripping the railing, as she had let go a few moments before as she was talking to look around, though she only went a few feet away. The TARDIS was interesting, even though it was messy and she wasn't allowed to touch things.

" _You humans are the ones that are fragile. You lot go down with a single shot to the head._ " Sunshine thought for a few moments, raising her eyebrows. "We all have our flaws, do we not? We may not be academic aliens, but I'm sure there's something we humans have or do better than.... your lot. Forgot where you were from." Sunshine slowly slid down into a sitting position, still holding onto the railing but in a criss-cross sitting position. " _And if you can handle yourself, fine. Stay shell shocked if it means you don't touch anything._ " Sunshine frowned at him a little, raising an eyebrow.

"Someone's a little paranoid about his spaceship." Sunshine muttered, barely audible. She was not fond of people who were over-possessive of material objects - but then again, this wasn't exactly a material object. It was a spaceship, and spaceships should probably be regarded as something other than a material object. Especially spaceships that had more rooms that you could count on the inside. Yawning slightly, Sunshine realized how tired she was. She had forgotten her plans to go home and sleep in the excitement of today. Closing her eyes for a few moments, Sunshine slipped into the grey area of consciousness where words sound like static against your head and you jerk yourself awake every few seconds. Of course, this time, she was brutally awoken by being violently thrown to her left, making her arm make an unpleasant cracking noise as she was still holding onto the railing. She quickly realized that this was rather like riding a train - do not try to stand up suddenly. Sunshine made that mistake pretty quickly, and was nearly thrown over the railing, had it not been for the TARDIS throwing her back onto the ground again, though not before she managed to hurl herself directly into the railing, knocking the wind out of her.

The ride was over then - Sunshine lay, stunned and still very tired, on the ground, but with the new added feeling of being punched in the stomach. Giving a small cough, she glanced over at the Doctor. "I never would have guessed. Stunning deduction, Sherlock. I just got karate-chopped in the stomach by the railing, do you think I'm fine?" Sunshine wheezed, raising her eyebrows. She did realize that she was still lying on the ground, half-way between facing down and on her side. Not a comfortable position, but her stomach felt like death and she was scared that if she moved she would be in even more pain.

 


	21. the beginning, part 21.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the beginning is turning out to be longer than i first anticipated, but i promise it's coming to a close soon!

"I came first in jiggery-pokery, I'll have you know," the Doctor had said, still fiddling with the console. A reply came to his head instantly, unprompted and unwanted, as clear in his head as though she was standing right there next to him, as though no time at all had passed since they had last spoken. "Nah," the voice said, humour underlying the words, "I failed hullabaloo." He didn't even know that he had memorised those words, had known that they were deep inside his memory after all of this time. He shook his head as if to clear the voice from his thoughts. Ghosts. There was no need for them, not now and not ever. Ghosts had no place in his life, reminding him of what had been and what he could never go back to.Never looking back because he dare not. These words also came to him unwarranted, but unlike the fond memories of before this was said in a cruel and harsh way, just like he remembered it. He had dismissed them at the time because he had been busy, too busy to think about the accusations people threw at his feet. It wasn't like he was new to insults being thrown at him, although when he was idle that did haunt him at the corner of his mind, the idea that he was always running away. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he had started running ever since at the age of eight when he had first looked into the Untempered Schism. Perhaps perhaps perhaps. Maybe that was the reason why he should never be idle.  
  
Sunshine had been a bit moody but the Doctor hadn't really been listening, fiddling with the console as he was and trying to make sure the TARDIS was alright. Sunshine was one of two women he was currently with and the other one needed far more attention than she did, so whatever she was saying went right over his head or, alternatively, in one ear and out the other. The TARDIS would ordinarily have been able to manage a simple trip like this - it wasn't even as though they were going back in time, just moving from one place to another which was more simple than going not only to a different place but in a different time period - but she had been knocked about more than he had during their spiral towards Earth, especially since the time vortex had opened high up in the sky and the TARDIS had pretty much free-fell down to the car. Just one trip, he thought to himself, one hand stroking the TARDIS console gently almost in consolation. If she could make this trip then they'd both be out of harm's way - it was hardly natural seeing a blue box on top of a car after all and since they had dropped near a school they'd be lucky if any school kid hadn't taken a looksie into the TARDIS and had seen him busy fixing it. That would be something to explain to some senior school teenager. If they were in a garage, however....they'd be safe. Or the TARDIS would be safe. The Doctor considered himself always safe, like he was always alright no matter what happened.   
  
Well, someone hadn't liked the trip. Nor had that particular someone clung onto something enough like the Doctor had, instead knocking directly into the railing and falling to the ground. " _I never would have guessed. Stunning deduction, Sherlock,_ " Sunshine groaned from the floor sarcastically." _I just got karate-chopped in the stomach by the railing, do you think I'm fine?_ " The Time Lord wordlessly took out his sonic screwdriver and, setting it to the right setting, moved it over Sunshine, back and forth and back and forth as the little machine buzzed in his hand. After a second or two he glanced at the tiny display. "Yes, I do," he said, apparently not even distressed by seeing her on the floor. After all, everyone had a bit of a tumble in the TARDIS, even him sometimes - that was the way he had gotten his cut anyway. "You're just winded according to the scan. Your arm, though..." He scanned both of the teacher's arms before the sonic screwdriver's blue light flashed in indication of something. "Ah. Well, I don't think it really needs saying."

* * *

 

Sunshine remained on the floor for a few more seconds before responding to his first sentence, which she hadn't gotten the chance to do before the TARDIS started moving. " _I came first in jiggery-pokery, I'll have you know._ " Sunshine couldn't help but chuckle a little in retrospect at this comment. "I'm partial to flim-flammery, myself." Sunshine sighed softly, running a hand through her hair.

The tiredness was hitting her heavily now, especially with her lying down position. It surprised her a little, however, when the Doctor came over to her side and moved... something that buzzed (an awful noise, in Sunshine's opinion,) over her body. " _You're just winded according to the scan. Your arm, though..._ " Sunshine let out a small groan, cutting him off.

"Whatever it is, I've had worse. Broken three of my ribs and one of my legs in one week. Fun week." Sunshine muttered, rolling over onto her back so she could sit up without putting pressure on her arm. Moving her shoulder and arm a bit, Sunshine winced. "Broken or not? It's either broken or dislocated, one of the two. Either way, I know how to fix it, or at least keep myself from injuring myself more." Sunshine straggled to her feet, wobbling a little bit but managing to make herself stay steady. "All right. You fix this thing and I'll... occupy myself by doing something. Taking apart guns and feeding my brother's dog, probably. Getting my arm to either be set or re-locate itself. Probably need you for re-locating my shoulder, actually. Ever had a dislocated shoulder? Getting off-track, never-mind. My brother has a lot of car-repair tools and things if you need them, so if you happen to use any of them, try not to lose or break anything, my brother really likes his tools." Sunshine said after a short pause, taking a step away from the Doctor.

"Let's just hope he's not here. He's not fond of strangers, especially those who end up in his garage in a police box, I hazard to guess." Sunshine added, looking up from her shoes. She was holding her arm with one hand, or, rather, she was really resting on a place in-between her shoulder and elbow, trying not to move it. Sunshine was fairly sure it wasn't broken, but then again, one could never be too careful when injured, especially when you didn't know how you were injured.

 

 


	22. the beginning, part 22.

Sunshine had had a bit of a rough time....he didn't think that he had ever had anyone in the TARDIS who had really become hurt before, but there was always the first time for everything. Not that he wanted this to become a habit, though, looking down at someone who was rolling around on the floor in pain. " _Whatever it is, I've had worse,_ " she said. " _Broken three of my ribs and one of my legs in one week. Fun week._ " 

"Sounds it," the Doctor muttered under his breath, carefully watching Sunshine sit up. She wasn't too badly hurt, but that shoulder and arm didn't look the healthiest in the Doctor's opinion. He didn't ask any questions, though, knowing that Sunshine would only give a sarcastic retort in reply. She didn't appear to like being asked if she was alright and it was fairly obvious that she wasn't so there was no real point in asking. She started saying that regardless of whether her shoulder and arm had been broken or dislocated she knew how to fix it, or at least stop herself from causing any more damage to the wound, before struggling to her feet. The Doctor watched her, ready to grab her other arm if she looked like she was about to have trouble, but apart from a bit of wobbling she regained her balance.   
  
" _All right. You fix this thing and I'll... occupy myself by doing something. Taking apart guns and feeding my brother's dog, probably. Getting my arm to either be set or re-locate itself. Probably need you for re-locating my shoulder, actually. Ever had a dislocated shoulder? Getting off-track, never-mind. My brother has a lot of car-repair tools and things if you need them, so if you happen to use any of them, try not to lose or break anything, my brother really likes his tools._ " "I have my own tool," the Doctor said, waving the sonic screwdriver. "And your brother won't be here. The TARDIS didn't identify any other life forms bar the neighbours next door." Sunshine was holding her arm in place carefully and the Time Lord eyed her injury. "And if you do need to relocate the shoulder, I'll help." As he said this he watched her cautiously, not sure how she was going to respond to that. Sunshine, who almost always wanted to seem independent, may not have liked this intrusion - but given that it was his fault that her car had been smashed, she had been held up at the school and she had gotten an injury, plus the fact he didn't like to see anyone injured on basic grounds, he figured he would at least offer. "Do you want some help getting around?" Moving around with a possibly dislocated shoulder wasn't going to be easy, especially if she was going to be going around the house doing little chores and bits and bobs as she said. "I have medical experience. Not just a doctor in name only."

* * *

 Sunshine gave a breathy, almost silent chuckle. "Sure was. Riding in a wheelchair is less fun than you might think." Sunshine said softly, briefly looking at her arm. Physically, there were no cuts or bruises or anything else, but once more, it hurt to move. Dislocated, Sunshine decided after a few more moments of thought, definitely dislocated.

" _I have my own tool._ " Sunshine looked up and raised her eyebrows at the sonic screwdriver. "That... that is a magic wand and you cannot convince me otherwise." Sunshine said decidedly after squinting at the sonic screwdriver. You couldn't blame her - in all fairness, it did look rather like a magic wand, and not really like a screwdriver, sonic or not. At his words about the neighbors and her brother, Sunshine raised her eyebrows and gave a single, small nod. She did, however, briefly wonder if the neighbors would come worrying. Sunshine's brother had the worrying type, which was rather annoying the majority of the time. They weren't the snooping type, though, which was good. Snooping and worrying combined was horrible.

" _And if you do need to relocate the shoulder, I'll help._ " Sunshine hesitated at this offer - while Sun hated having to ask for help on anything at all, she also couldn't relocate her shoulder by herself. "Mmmmaybe. Sure. We'll see. If I really have trouble getting around and such, I can ask you. Right now, I'll find something to occupy myself with. Maybe I'll stay in here, actually look around without being punched in the gut by a railing." Sunshine took another step backwards from the Doctor, turning around as she did so. Really, what she wanted to do was sleep, but exploring the TARDIS was far more interesting than sleep. Even if sleep was something she so desperately wanted to do, even if dreaming was something she loved doing... right, no, she would have to explore. After all, it's rude to fall asleep on guests, even if that guest is just using her brother's garage to fix a spaceship.

"No, I'll absolutely explore a little." She yawned a little, turning back around to wander about and face the Doctor. After a few seconds of hesitation, still holding her arm, Sunshine wandered a little ways over to the chair by the control panel, seating herself in it. The control panel was interesting, yes, but as she had been very severely instructed not to touch anything on it, she just looked at it. After a while, Sunshine briefly closed her eyes, quickly returning to that in-between sleep state, craning her neck back slightly so it rested on the head of the chair.

* * *

"Oh, I don't know," the Doctor said, putting his head on one side as his gaze wandered away from Sunshine, clearly taking the idea mock seriously."Bit of a buzz with the sonic screwdriver later and I might be able to race around in it." He glanced back towards Sunshine, who was now looking at her arm. There weren't any cuts or bruises, which was something - then they'd have another set of problems to deal with. Dislocated shoulders and broken down space/time machines was all of the trouble he wanted, all of the trouble he could fit on his plate. At least she had landed alright, the Doctor reflected, looking around the TARDIS for a second or two. They hadn't ended up in the 1980s or something like that, it would have said where they were in time and space on the monitor. He was just glad that the trip hadn't been too overly complicated and they hadn't had to go backwards and forwards in time. Now that would have been something quite different...but simply going to one place or another, well, that was something smaller, something that the TARDIS would've found easier handling. Now that she was grounded she could be worked on, anyway, and hopefully patched up now she was in a safe place. As long as Sunshine's brother didn't come back they had no problems - the Daleks weren't going to be coming for a few days at least which was plenty of time for the Doctor to fix the TARDIS and move off, so it was completely safe. And Sunshine didn't need to know of the threat, anyway. He had mentioned the aliens who were chasing him once or twice but she hadn't pursued it further and he was glad about that because then he'd have been forced to lie. There was no point telling her about the Daleks of all things, not when the universe had suddenly opened up for her and she was thinking of all of the good things, good aliens like him.   
  
A magic wand? The Doctor snorted. "A sonic magic wand, thanks," he said haughtily, lifting the sonic screwdriver up and throwing it up into the air for him to catch a second or two later. He didn't mind it being called a magic wand, no matter how whimsical that sounded. It was more the fact that the sonic part had been ignored. He'd worked hard on the sonic part. "Made by yours truly. Had it for years. Handy with cabinets." And a lot of other things too, of course. He was still working on making it work on wood and a deadlock seal, though....those were two things that were alluding him. He didn't really fuss about the fact it didn't work on two things, though, considering it worked on pretty much everything else. In all the time the Doctor had had it, though, he hadn't really changed the software much, probably just out of laziness. It had gone through a few different casings, though - that was due to the change of preference during regenerations, of course. He remembered one of the last ones he'd had, all red with a bit on the end...now that one had looked like a magic wand, the one he had had when he had been in his eighth incarnation. He liked the current casing, though. It was sleek and shiny in the light....perhaps it did look a bit like a magic wand. Sort of. All he needed was a new casing with star patterns on it and then it would look like a magic wand, if he ever wanted to stop saving the Earth and retire to New New York to become a magician for children's parties. It was an idea.   
  
" _Mmmmaybe. Sure. We'll see. If I really have trouble getting around and such, I can ask you. Right now, I'll find something to occupy myself with. Maybe I'll stay in here, actually look around without being punched in the gut by a railing._ " The Doctor watched her look around and yawn, before saying she'd definitely explore a little. " _No one's actually managed that before,_ " the Doctor observed. "The TARDIS doesn't usually have so bumpy a ride." He saw her sit down in the chair by the control panel before half closing her eyes, before flicking his own gaze towards the control panel. "You can look at the console if you want. I've grounded her now so she isn't going anywhere." He was a bit adverse to the idea of giving her the grand tour, partially because it would take years to go round each room and also because the TARDIS was weak, but now that they had landed and didn't have anywhere important to got to some of the pressure had been taken off the Doctor. He got closer to the console himself, his hand gently rubbing against one of the areas of the console not completely covered in controls. The console wasn't like other space ship consoles out there that were all shiny and modern - this was crammed full of controls, and it had to be. There was no way you could fly any space ship through time and space without a ton of machinery, and all of that had to be controlled via a ton of levers, buttons and switches. He had never officially learnt how to fly the TARDIS - he had learnt on the job, partially by letting the TARDIS guide him and partially by letting himself make mistakes. If he hadn't made mistakes he wouldn't have got into as much trouble as he had, but that trouble had led him to meeting great people so he wasn't too bothered. After 800 or so years of flying the thing he was getting the hang of it now, anyway. He had had plenty of practise during all of that time. 

 


	23. intermission, part 1.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> old stories are told.

It had been getting late when the Doctor had given Sunshine a bit of freedom to look around the TARDIS and the console. He hadn't allowed her to activate anything, mind you, as he would never have gone that far, but she had been allowed to look at the console with a little more detail and at the various controls which littered the circular structure in the middle of the room like coral swarming over a rock. This they hadn't been doing for long when Sunshine had suddenly begun to tire, undoubtedly due to the stress of the hours before and because of her dislocated arm which no doubt was hurting her a bit. The Doctor had been a bit tired too, and so after bidding her goodnight Sunshine had retired to the guest bedroom a little way down the hallway and the Doctor was alone in the TARDIS once more. He had allowed himself an hour or so of sleep, though, just enough for the Time Lord to be able to function again without getting exhausted; he had slept right there in the TARDIS control room and hadn't even bothered to find himself a room (given how big the TARDIS was that could have taken ages), instead rolling up his trench coat to make an impromptu pillow and lying under the coral like structures dotted around the control room before he had finally dropped off to the sound of the TARDIS rumbling gently in the background like a lullaby. 

  
By the time he awoke it had been in the small hours and he had set to work, first piling away all of the boxes that had taken up the TARDIS control room. This had taken some time but the Doctor needed space to work and he couldn't have space when there were tons of boxes littered about so it had to be done. In the end he had resorted to making the sonic screwdriver unleash a sound pulse on some of the boxes, allowing them to levitate through the air using his knowledge of happy physics (which had been learnt alongside happy primes and other happy recreational mathematics subjects) and follow him to try and save time. This had worked and after he had piled all the boxes away to their relative storerooms, and lamenting the loss of the rubber duckies, the Time Lord, not pausing for breath, began to take away one of the gratings that made up the floor of the old girl. After that it had simply been a matter of spending several hours, starting from one in the morning, leaning down over it with the sonic screwdriver in his mouth buzzing away and his hands full of assorted wires, detached buttons and strings. The hours had whizzed by as he had been fixing the TARDIS and it seemed like he was experiencing a bit of time travel himself even without the TARDIS as he moved around, taking wires this way and that and occasionally slamming the screwdriver against the floor irritably when it decided it didn't want to work. Most of the time, however, just to occupy himself, he had started talking to the TARDIS.   
  
"So what's going up with you, then?" he asked very softly once he had gotten his head out of the area that the grating had protected, putting it back in it's place. "What's up with you?" The TARDIS, though, had not wanted to reply, and only continued rumbling away as she always did. To an outsider perhaps it wouldn't have been immediately obvious that there was anything wrong with her but as the Doctor placed a hand on one of the coral structures he could feel some pain there, like a gash. And so he had carried on through the night, pulling up gratings and sticking his head into places that the TARDIS manual back on Gallifrey had said never to place your head (but that was probably a guideline, he thought to himself) and trying to find the cause of the problem. That he did - it seemed that in the crash a part of the TARDIS shields had come away and something had been hit, the molten remains of which were now sitting on and therefore 'suffocating' some of the other tools deep under the console. This was a time for drastic measures, clearly. The Doctor rarely got out the big tools but he had unearthed the blowtorch kit as he had been putting the boxes away and it seemed that nothing else would do. So off he had gone, putting on the big black metal mask to cover his face and, after finding some way of making the blowtorch work via a few manipulations with the sonic, he had set to work, hanging himself precariously over some of the areas of the TARDIS that were usually covered by more of the floor gratings and setting on melting what looked like the remains of another component."That was lovely, that was," a mournful little mutter could be heard as the Doctor worked, catching the molten remains of whatever had been hit and had squashed everything else before chucking it next to him out of the console workings to cool down. Almost at once he could almost hear the TARDIS be able to breathe again. "Ha!" he said victoriously, turning off the blowtorch and flipping up the mask to reveal -   
  
\- Sunshine, who was standing by the garage doorway looking like she had woken up on the wrong side of the bed. The Doctor heard her mumbled greeting and looked decidedly sheepish. For an alien he could do 'sheepish' really well. To be fair, he had had multiple goes at being sheepish so it came naturally. "Ah. Good morning," he said, pushing the bowl of molten slag out of the way and taking off the blowtorch mask, putting both it and the now deactivated blowtorch by his side. "...Did I wake you?" He had almost forgotten Sunshine had been there - he had been up half the night, or perhaps three quarters of the night, and all that time he had spent inside the TARDIS so it had almost been like he was alone.

* * *

 

" _Ah. Good morning._ " Sunshine offered a weak smile, waving one hand in his direction before another yawn crossed her lips and she stepped towards the TARDIS by a few feet. Sun had never been a morning person, regardless of when and how she got up on work days.

" _What have you been doing while I was asleep, then, blowtorching things in your box? You kinda woke me up, yes. My alarm went off, then I heard a lot of clanging and however one would describe the sound a blowtorch makes. A whooshy, hosey kind of sound, I suppose._ " Sunshine took a few more steps until she entered the TARDIS, walking a few more paces before seating herself by the railing. The TARDIS looked nicer, better when it wasn't horribly cluttered. In fact, she rather liked it this way. It was very cozy, if one could call a spaceship cozy. She would like to live in some place like this, excluding the spaceship and constantly and only slightly irritated Time Lord parts that seemed to have to come with the cool-looking, bigger-on-the-inside interior of the blue police box. Of course, she knew the Doctor wouldn't want to have her hanging around - she knew that.

To him, Sunshine supposed she was probably a bit annoying - a silly little human schoolteacher, ex-soldier who asked too many questions and talked way too fast most of the time, so fast nobody could understand, a schoolteacher who never smiled. Even Sunshine, had she been... whatever the equivalent to a female Time Lord was, she would get annoyed by herself. She would probably think herself unlikable, maybe. She kind of was, in all honesty, when first meeting her. "So! You alien lot need or even want breakfast, seeing as you obviously don't need any sort of sleep?

* * *

Apparently he had woken Sunshine up - with a blowtorch. If that wasn't being a bad guest the Doctor didn't know what was. He was still sitting on the TARDIS floor, still a little bit sheepish as Sunshine entered the TARDIS, yawning as she went. "Sorry," he said. "Got a bit...involved." The Doctor tapped the blowtorch mask that was lying next to him, his face and cheeks still red a bit from being close to such extreme heat. "Some of the TARDIS instruments got caught in the blast and melted on top of other instruments. She," he said, reaching up from where he was sitting on the TARDIS floor and patting the console like he was patting a pet which couldn't help but be bad, "Made a heck of an effort getting us here, considering." He had felt her discomfort as he had piloted the TARDIS but it hadn't been obvious to him until he had dug about under the console to see where she had received much of the damage. There was still a bit he had to do with her, actually - fix the shields for starters. He had thought that the TARDIS was safe...the fact he had been flying her without the shields on was a tad scary. It was like saying he had been driving a car at night with no headlights on. Nothing had happened but something could've done. The last thing he needed was bumping into another version of himself (likely) or bumping into the Daleks (scarily likely).   
  
" _So! You alien lot need or even want breakfast, seeing as you obviously don't need any sort of sleep?_ " The thought of food brightened the Time Lord considerably from his rather morbid musings and he looked up. "If you're offering," he said, a touch of a grin on his face. "Wouldn't mind a bowl of cereal. Or a slice of toast. Toast'll do." He leaned out from where he was sitting to the garage which lay beyond the TARDIS doors. Beyond those doors had been all sorts of things, all sorts of alien worlds and planets...but right now toast lay beyond those doors and there was nothing the Doctor liked better than a nice slice of toast. "I'll be with you in a moment, just need to repair the shields."

* * *

 

" _Got a bit...involved._ " Sunshine snickered a little at his comment - he had obviously gotten a little more than a 'bit' involved in... whatever he was doing. Fixing the TARDIS, it seemed by his position. "It's okay. Is she okay now? She looks a lot better than before. Less cluttered and... broken." Sunshine said hesitantly, drawing her legs from criss-cross to her chest as she looked around. The TARDIS didn't have the delicate, fragile feeling it first had when she had entered it, and the railings looked like you could actually lean on them without falling through. Sunshine scooted a little closer to the railings as she thought, biting her bottom lip.

" _Wouldn't mind a bowl of cereal. Or a slice of toast. Toast'll do._ " Sunshine didn't jump this time as her thoughts were interrupted, like she usually did. "Toast. Right. I will be back in approximately three minutes and forty five seconds, give or take." Sunshine jumped up - quite literally, jumped up - and dashed out of the TARDIS.

Sure enough, she was back within minutes, gingerly clutching a washcloth to the edge of a plate with three pieces of toast on it, consistently switching hands so she didn't burn herself though the washcloth. "I come bearing toast." She murmured as she delicately set the plate on the ground by the Doctor, seating herself across from him. "So! I suppose you'll be off once you eat your toast, then. Send me some interstellar postcards of the icecream capital of the universe as my reward for letting you use a garage and feeding you toast. And for my poor, poor, car." Sunshine felt a little sad as she spoke - she didn't really want him to leave. For a moment, she let a smile play on her lips - this was almost certainly somewhere along an encounter of the third kind, if she wanted to make references to movies. Besides, he was cool, even if he seemed constantly irritated by something, even though it was slight. 

 

 

 


	24. intermission, part 2.

The Doctor still had his hand on the console, reaching up as he was to touch his ship. As always he felt the TARDIS' consciousness, bigger than any human's and any Time Lord's, moving towards him and moving towards his touch receptively. The touch was less hesitant, less panicky as an animal's would if it had just been hurt and was being picked up; there was fluidity in the contact, an ease there that there hadn't been before. There was always ease between the TARDIS and the Doctor, but before that ease had been hindered by the pain, like the consciousness that was moving towards him was also dragging something along with her, something that was hard to move and almost strangulating. That had been lifted, though, and although the Doctor rarely felt direct feelings straight in his head coming from the TARDIS - that she only did if there was something wrong with either of them or something very happy had happened - he could sense gratitude. She was his ship; what else did she expect him to do? " _It's okay. Is she okay now?_ " The Doctor glanced across at Sunshine from where his gaze had originally been on the console. "Yeah, much better," he said, giving the TARDIS an affectionate tap before withdrawing his hand. "She's an old girl but she hasn't died on me yet." And never would, hopefully. The Doctor wondered if Sunshine had noted the way he spoke of the TARDIS and acted when he was touching a part of the ship, though he doubted this. On Earth they didn't have connections with their technology....not yet, anyway. Not in this time.   
  
Sunshine darted off to make toast and as she did so the Doctor turned around and got to work with the TARDIS again, fixing the shields by fiddling with his sonic screwdriver, smacking it a few times to make it work and muttering something in Gallifreyan. He was surprised that no one had seen him land....this thought kept him occupied as he worked. Usually UNIT, as friendly as they were, kept tabs on when he appeared and tried to monitor him a little. Not that it worked, of course, but it gave them a little bit of control, the smallest amount of control they could have when they were dealing with a 900 year old Time Lord who happened to stay, or go, whenever he pleased. Perhaps they just didn't think that he would have turned up at a school though surely their satellites should have noticed something falling to Earth. They should be swarming around here now, following the tiny traces of TARDIS energy to here and going about with their red berets and their "Blue Eagle" and "Greyhound" codenames. Part of him found it amusing he didn't have a code name but yet his ship did. Perhaps many of the UNIT people thought 'The Doctor' was his codename; it would have gone over some of their heads to know that that was the name even his mother had called him. Once you chose a name, once you had made your promise, that was it. This kept him busy for some time as he got to work with the TARDIS and although little time had flown by within this time he was already fully 'involved', as he would have put it, when Sunshine came back with toast, practically juggling it between her hands to stop the hot plate from burning herself through the cloth. " _I come bearing toast._ " The Doctor was shaken out of his reverie, looking up as a plate of lovely looking toast was placed down beside him. "Ta," he said, tentatively taking up a bit of hot toast and, trying not to touch it too much due to the heat, taking a bite. A few chews later and there came the appreciative "mm" sounds as he crunched his way through his toast. "That hit the spot," he said, chewing and swallowing.   
  
Sunshine had seated herself on the floor a little way across from him and the Doctor was finishing off his first slice when she began to talk. " _So!_ " she said. " _I suppose you'll be off once you eat your toast, then. Send me some interstellar postcards of the icecream capital of the universe as my reward for letting you use a garage and feeding you toast. And for my poor, poor, car._ " The Doctor was surprised by her words - and was there a certain tone to her words, a certain undercurrent of something hinting at sadness despite her smile? The Time Lord finished off his slice and rested for a second before going for the second one. "Yeah, I suppose," he said, shrugging as he sat resting his back against the console. The gentle TARDIS noises around him were soothing. "And I will - your car won't be forgotten, either." There was a slight grin on his face as he spoke. He glanced towards Sunshine, his tone amused. "Well, now you can say you've had an alien in your brother's garage who had a penchant for toast. Or," he said reflectively, reconsidering, "Maybe you won't. No need to sound like a nutcase. Thing still applies though." He took a bite of toast and swallowed suddenly, like he was remembering something. "If a bunch of folks with red berets come round just say I'm gone." The Doctor was going to leave it at that, but then he thought he might as well explain. "As I said, knocking around here for fifty years or more, bound to get noticed by the government. They're friendly, they just try to keep up with me - the crash would've scared them a little. Good fashion sense with the berets." Despite his jovial tone the Doctor suddenly felt a bit sad. It was true that he'd be leaving soon, but somehow he didn't want to leave Sunshine. She was bright and clever and although a bit snarky at times she had a good way about her that he picked up on. Never another companion, he told himself yet again. Not after Martha, Donna and Rose.

* * *

 

" _She's an old girl but she hasn't died on me yet._ " Sunshine raised her eyebrows slightly at these words - how old was the TARDIS? Was she older than the Doctor himself? How old was the Doctor, exactly? He had said he was older than... well, probably older than most things or people on Earth at the moment, but Sunshine couldn't recall him saying anything more specific than 900 years, which seemed too round to be an exact number.

 "How old IS the TARDIS? Older than you, I'm assuming?" Sunshine asked after a moment, voicing these thoughts aloud. She usually kept such thoughts to herself, but she had changed that now. Sunshine supposed that with the Doctor, if she didn't actually voice her questions, it was pretty likely that those questions wouldn't get answered anytime soon. That was okay, really, but it just meant Sunshine would have to be more vocal and outspoken with her questions than usual, and Sunshine was usually very outspoken to begin with. Well, except for questions, of course. Sunshine really wasn't sure why she never voiced the questions she had, but she just... didn't. " _That hit the spot._ " Sunshine looked up from her feet and offered a small smile.

"Glad you liked it." She chuckled, raising her eyebrows. Then the Doctor began to speak about leaving, and Sunshine frowned a little. "Yeah, I doubt anyone would believe I met an alien who wanted toast." She said after the Doctor finished speaking. " _As I said, knocking around here for fifty years or more, bound to get noticed by the government. They're friendly, they just try to keep up with me - the crash would've scared them a little. Good fashion sense with the berets._ " This amused Sunshine a little, despite knowing the Doctor was completely serious. "Oh, so you're a fugitive then? A fugitive alien, that's new." Sunshine took a breath and paused before speaking. "So remind me again why I can't come with you to the ice cream capital of the entire universe? Any specific reason, or do you just not want me around?" She asked suddenly, diverting the conversation rather abruptly. She still was very interested in why she couldn't come, though. After all, the Doctor had never explicitly stated why she couldn't come - in fact, it seemed to Sunshine that he had exclusively avoided that particular question. Lucky for her, Sunshine was persistent and very good at getting answers out of people who would prefer not to give out answers.

 


	25. intermission, part 3.

"How old?" the Doctor considered it, one hand moving through his spiky brown hair as he thought about it. "Oh yeah, older than me. She was a museum piece before I was even around - her line was retired before I started playing with Röntgen radiation blocks." Gallifreyan parents had funny ideas about what to give their children - or they would have had if they were human. Thankfully the Gallifreyans hadn't, so Röntgen radiation wasn't as harmful. Even now the Doctor had fond memories of building towers out of Röntgen radiation blocks in his forties. By the time he had been born the Time Lords were at their height, anyway - they had long since deserted the barbaric Death Zone of the species' youth and had grown to be responsible custodians of time itself, watching over the worlds and the planets that made up the universe yet swearing never to interfere. The Doctor, ironically, perhaps would have done better in the wilder times before he had been born - simply watching as people died and life went on had never been his style and travelling suited him better, even if he had been labelled a 'renegade' by his own planet and even held on trial. Happily enough on that occasion he had avoided the 'death by disintegration' penalty and had also saved someone's life to boot from an assassin, so it had all worked out well regardless. During those times he had liked travelling - even if the other Gallifreyans weren't exactly happy with him 100% of the time, there was always a home to go back to. Not anymore, though, of course. "She's not technically meant to fly, she was in repairs when she became mine...." There was a certain cheeky look on the Doctor's face, one that was hinting of a bit of mischief. "...On a finders keepers basis."   
  
" _Yeah, I doubt anyone would believe I met an alien who wanted toast._ " The Doctor snorted at that as he ate. That was true - not many people would believe her. Lots of aliens liked toast, though - Sunshine would be surprised if she knew. Easy to make, shows Earth's culture....give it a few hundred years when the humans start going out into the stars and it was to become very popular, alongside the sale of space-age toasters that came in various happy looking colours. The Doctor had a cheerfully orange one in the TARDIS, stashed somewhere in the massive kitchen which was four corridors away, down a flight of steps and the third door on the right. Or at least he thought it was there - whenever he got hungry the TARDIS rather mischievously tended to move the kitchen around just to annoy him and to make him run about a bit. More than a few times had he walked into the aquarium whilst looking for the kitchen for a humble packet of crisps or the onboard zoo where all of the animals' needs were automatically kept going even when he wasn't around. Most of the time it was easier to park outside a newsagent's and go in and get some crisps rather than look for the onboard kitchen, a fact that the Doctor always made clear to the TARDIS rather grumpily whenever he was on his way to see some one-of-a-kind thing going on in the stars and had had to go back in time and find a newsagent's and pay for some Walkers crisps to munch before he could go and see whatever he had been looking forward to see.   
  
A fugitive? The Doctor looked up indignantly from his slice of toast. "Mmm-mmm-mmm," he said irritably through a mouthful of toast before swallowing. "Oi, less of the fugitive stuff," he said when he was no longer talking through a mouthful of food. "We're on friendly terms. I help them out every so often and they in return..." He paused, trying to wonder what they did in return. "Well, they give me free parking," he said lamely. "They're always trying to salute me, actually. Keep trying to tell them not to." His statement about not being a fugitive was true...at least, when it came to this time. Technically he had been banished from England by Queen Victoria in the 1800s and that had been why Torchwood had been set up. He personally thought that banishing him - and not only him but Rose, too - was a bit over the top. She had had to knight them both for their service in protecting her and protecting many others from the werewolf lifeform that had fallen to Earth (Scotland, to be precise) and they had helped....though he understood why she was scared. Her encounter with the werewolf was not the first encounter a royal had had with an alien if he were to think of Elizabeth the First - now she was another thing entirely, old Liz - but it had certainly been the most modern one by Victoria's day and apparently the first thing she had thought of was banish both Rose and himself to try and keep everything alien away from her empire. Technically, therefore, he wasn't even meant to be on English soil, although nowadays Torchwood was far more accommodating if not slightly against him. The fact that his friend Captain Jack was involved in the organisation made him more tolerated, anyway. But he certainly wasn't a fugitive.   
  
Sunshine was asking now why she couldn't come with him to Calypso Nine - asking him if there was a particular reason or if he simply didn't want her around. Oh. Difficult question, this. He didn't want to tell her about the Daleks but at the same time he didn't want to be so rude as to say he didn't want to have her around. And even this by itself was difficult considering that he was split even on the idea itself of taking another person. He had been through three companions already since the Time War and every one of them he was glad to call his friend but they had all come to ends that he hadn't desired for them, ends that he had eventually had had no control over....he couldn't risk someone else, not another person to try and eventually get over. He wanted to protect Earth, had always wanted to protect Earth as he had always wanted to protect his home planet, so why did he kept spiriting away the planet's residents to always get them to meet some sort of harm? He always wanted to show them the stars, perhaps purely for the selfish reason of trying not to get lonely especially after the Time War, but yet it never ended happily and always ended when things were going well, when he had made friends and perhaps had even fallen in love. And off they went, to a parallel world, to get their family tortured and to be on the run for a year when he was imprisoned, to loose all memory of him....the Doctor felt responsibility for his human friends, being far older than them and also more knowledgeable about life off world, and with every blow it had been driven into him that he was clearly not responsible enough to deal with having someone else in the TARDIS. Guilt weighed down on him like a physical weight as he sat on the floor, leaning on the TARDIS console with a slice of toast in one hand. Without him Donna, Martha and Rose would still be out there. Well, Martha was, but her family had suffered. Donna would never remember him, and he'd never see Rose again. He couldn't take on someone else. Life wasn't fair and it wasn't going to be fair with either him or his companions. That was the way it was. How could he reply to Sunshine when the Daleks were probably going to start chasing him soon again when they got his scent and she was going to end up yet another person scarred by her adventures with him? The earlier, cheekier nature of the Doctor slipped away as he shrugged, trying to pass off as casual. "I don't travel with companions," he said. "Not anymore."

* * *

 " _Oh yeah, older than me. She was a museum piece before I was even around - her line was retired before I started playing with Röntgen radiation blocks._ " Sunshine chuckled a little at this, cocking an eyebrow. " _She's not technically meant to fly, she was in repairs when she became mine...._ " Sunshine raised both eyebrows at the statement, though she was still a little amused by his tone in general.

"I must admit, I don't think I've met anyone who played with anything radioactive as a child, save for you." Pausing for a moment, Sunshine considered his second statement. "So, essentially, you stole her. If you want to be blunt about it. Why'd you steal her?" Sunshine was genuinely interested now - they were getting off docile, domestic topics and moving into subjects that Sunshine actually took interest in - like how old the TARDIS was and other things of the sort. Things about the Doctor, not so much things about Sunshine and certainly not on horrible memories of war and violence that the two had in common.

" _Mmm-mmm-mmm._ " The vague mumbling of the Doctor brought her back to the conversation at hand, and for a moment she wondered if she had misheard him. Had the Doctor just said something and Sunshine was still too distracted to pay attention, or was he just making incomprehensible mumbling noises as a response? A pause, then a clear and understandable response. " _Oi, less of the fugitive stuff._ " Oh, so he had just had his mouth full. That probably made more sense, Sunshine decided as the Doctor continued speaking about not being a fugitive. "Right, got it. So if you're not a fugitive, then what are you, if you don't want the government finding you?" Sunshine asked after a small pause of her own, slowly thinking about what he had said. Sunshine usually took her time answering things like this, and most of the said time was used to just come up with an appropriate response that wasn't overly outspoken or rude, neither of which she really wanted to be viewed as, regardless of whether or not they were part of her personality or not. And they were, if she thought about it. Of course, maybe those parts of her personality were formed just to spite her family's insistence that she stop being a tomboy and start acting like the sweet little girl they had been expecting. In fact, as she thought about it now, that was actually a pretty big part of why she was so... so Sunshine, was the best term to use. The other parts were because one, her boxing uncle encouraged the outspoken behavior and said she would need to know how to use it in her adult life, and two because she rather liked being outspoken. It gave her an explanation as to why she was saying whatever she was thinking out loud.

" _I don't travel with companions._ " The words snapped Sunshine out of her daze once more, bringing her back to attention as there was a small pause in the Doctor's words. " _Not anymore._ " He sounded... sad, almost. Sad layered with false casualty. She recognized the tone pretty well, and the Doctor was, in the best way possible, very bad at trying to be casual. "Well, why not?" Sunshine answered almost immediately for once, a very small hint of indignation in her voice as she spoke.

 


	26. intermission, part 4.

"I can withstand most types of radiation better than you," the Doctor explained, figuring, now he was going back to a few seconds before, that his statement about playing with radiation as a child probably needed explaining. Rötgen radiation was nothing - most types of radiation he could cope with, usually by channelling out the radiation into something else, usually a piece of clothing. Last time he had had an encounter with Rötgen radiation it had been on the moon and he had had to get it out of his shoe...the thought was a sobering one, though the conversation hd clearly moved on as Sunshine cut to the chase and asked him why he had stolen the TARDIS. It was a blunt way of saying it but it was true - it wasn't like the Doctor had owned the TARDIS to begin with. It in fact had passed through multiple hands before his own, although always Time Lord hands: Gallifrey had always guarded the TARDISes carefully and only Time Lords with permission were meant to drive them around. Emphasis onpermission. The Doctor looked at Sunshine like she was mad. "Why would you steal a space-time machine? To give it a go!" Humans weren't the only species plagued with a brilliant sense of curiosity - in fact the Doctor had been surprised to hear that he had been one of the first to ever steal a TARDIS considering the potential it had. Of course most Gallifreyans were into all of that "observe but don't interfere" nonsense....but how they had been able to sit about when there were space-time machines never failed to astound him.   
  
Sunshine was still asking him about the government - part of him wondered if she was too curious for her own good. Was it really asking someone who you thought was a fugitive why he was one? As it happened he wasn't but he could have been. The Doctor shrugged with the air of a twelve year old who was getting upset that his parents had closed down his Facebook account. "Don't want them following me round the place. Where's the fun in that?" He shifted where he was sitting to make himself more comfortable. "I go to them when I want to. Or when they need help. Usually they're fine in their own but they can be a bit too...." The Doctor tried to think of the right word. "Trigger-happy." There was disapproval in his tone. "Not around humans, though, just aliens. Other aliens, by the way, not me." If UNIT ever decided to go trigger happy with him then they'd see how much merciful he was. He didn't see this really happening though - UNIT were the friendly ones and the most harmful thing they ever did to him was salute him when he didn't want to be saluted. Torchwood were the ones he had to watch out for. Slimy lot, Torchwood - apart from Torchwood Three, of course, in Cardiff. They were the good ones.   
  
Sunshine wasn't taking no for an answer regarding companions and she asked him almost immediately after he had spoken why he didn't have companions anymore. In retrospect, looking back, the Doctor saw it had been to things - two things to set him off. It had been the question, firstly, which had been rude enough as it was. After all, she was a teacher - wasn't she around noisy children all the time asking all the wrong questions? And then here was the tone. As disguised as it was, there it was, a bit of indignation in her tone that he could just about hear within her words on a subtle undercurrent. How dare she ask? How dare she pry so much into his private affairs? He felt anger rise in his chest, an anger that he could not bury, could not conceal. "Because they keep getting hurt," he snapped, his patience finally leaving him and anger, fury, replacing it. Anger was splashed all over his words, his brown eyes fixed on Sunshine with a glare that could melt down any metal with just a single glance. But just as quickly as it came it went and the Doctor looked away. He was angry at Sunshine - but angry at himself too, almost unable to live with himself for the friends - and for the love - he had lost. This was anger he had been keeping to himself for too long. "They keep getting hurt," he repeated quietly, almost to himself. In his head he said something else, too: "And so do I."

* * *

" _Why would you steal a space-time machine? To give it a go!_ " This managed to get a snicker out of Sunshine, who responded a few moments later. "Well, that's the obvious answer if you want to go the blunt route. I already knew that any person presented with the opportunity to go through the entirety of time and space would snatch it up in a heartbeat, illegal theft involved or not. Or, at least, I know I would. I was just wondering if there was a reason other than unquenchable curiosity about space involved." She chuckled, leaning backwards so she was supporting herself on the palms of her hands. She craned her neck back after a few moments so that she was looking up at the ceiling of the TARDIS, which was actually quite interesting. As interesting as the rest of TARDIS's interior, if not more so. In fact, it was probably more interesting than the rest of the TARDIS because it was actually surprisingly... bland. One solid color with a few wires lacing around the middle, connecting to who-knows-what on the other side. It was actually rather surprising to see a part of an interstellar spaceship that was bigger on the inside that was almost normal looking, save for the fact it was part of an interstellar spaceship that was bigger on the inside, of course.

Tilting her head back down to look at the Doctor, she raised her eyebrows a little. "Trigger-happy, the government? No." She said, adding a false gasp at the end of her sentence to punctuate her sarcasm. "Regardless, they haven't gone 'trigger-happy' on you or any of us. I do hope they don't come by here, and if they do, I hope that my brother isn't here. Doesn't do well with people in general, really. Especially anyone who may be remotely involved in government. Huge conspiracy theorist, despite being a relatively cool guy. You should see his billboard on his bedroom wall." Sunshine returned her attention briefly to the ceiling as she spoke, but quickly diverted her attention to other parts of the TARDIS, namely the control panel.

If Sunshine squinted a little, she could see the greenish-blue hue that colored the control panel pulse a little. Well, more like a heartbeat in small waves, or the small ripples on a pond that occur when you throw a stone in, or the waves that touch just the shore on the ocean. A pretty sight, yes, if a bit confusing. Up until now, Sunshine had gone along with using 'she' to refer to the TARDIS, but now some part of her was wondering if the TARDIS was actually.. well, actually alive. It looked like a possibility now, judging by the way the Doctor spoke of the TARDIS and by the faint, heartbeat-like, pulse-y glow of the control panel. Dragging her eyes away from the control panel, Sunshine returned her gaze to the Doctor once more, a few moments before he spoke.

" _Because they keep getting hurt._ " Sunshine almost flinched at his tone, but slowly returning her gaze to his, she returned the angry glare without wavering. She was used to glaring at people, and she was quite good at giving people an if-looks-could-kill glare. Luckily, she didn't have to do it for very long because the Doctor looked away. "Oh, and I guess you think that's your fault, is it?" She returned the snappish tone with quite possibly equal or greater fury. "What happened to that 'doing-things-for-the-sake-of-doing-things' attitude you had when you told me about taking the TARDIS? Better spent time with them and had them get hurt than rather not spend time with them at all!" Sunshine took a deep breath. "No guts, no glory, Doctor. Nothing stays with you forever, especially in your case, and you can hardly expect people to stick around with you forever when they're only human and every single human on the face of the earth will die in some manner or another. Better go out with a bang than die quietly in one's sleep." She lowered her voice a little, though it was still as coated with anger as before. "Even if it was your fault, that's no reason to sink into a living hell because of it."

* * *

Sunshine matched his glare, looking back at him with equal fury. " _Oh, and I guess you think it's your fault, is it?_ " she snapped back at him as a retort as he turned his gaze away, just as angry and as furious as he was. She was matching him feeling for feeling, thought for thought, word for word. He had meant to shut her up with his comment, to shame her into staying quiet and giving him a rest from her incessant questions, but it only drove her onwards, gave her some sort of energy to keep going and to seemingly push him to his limit. This was someone who clearly wouldn't shut up until she wanted to. " _What happened to that 'doing-things-for-the-sake-of-doing-things' attitude you had when you told me about taking the TARDIS?_ " she asked him angrily. "Better spent time with them and had them get hurt than rather not spend time with them at all!" He had already gotten to his limit, though. He couldn't be pushed any further. And with every word she was saying he found it harder to answer back, angry retorts and counterattacks dying in his throat before he had a chance to say them. " _No guts, no glory, Doctor..._ " The Doctor didn't look up at her, unable to reach her eyes as she carried on, talking about how he couldn't expect people to stick around with him forever as they were only human and he was not. It was his nature to last longer than they did, in the end, and there was nothing he could do about it. Better go out with a bang than die quietly in one's sleep. That saying particularly rattled around his head as he stared into the rest of the TARDIS, looking at the railing rather than the human sitting opposite. Better go out with a bang. No guts, no glory.   
  
The Doctor was silent, his brown eyes still fixed on the metal gleam of the railing. Unquenchable curiosity about space, Sunshine had been saying earlier. Now there was something - perhaps the words to describe the reason why he had set off in the first place. In all of his incarnations there had been the thirst for adventure that simply couldn't be satisfied on Gallifrey. Oh, he got to hear of other planets, of course; the Time Lords were always watching other worlds, of course they were, and so you heard things like oh, Raxacoricofallapitorius is in a war again with Clom, and the Sycorax bumped into yet another Judoon fleet, but you'd never see anything, never hear anything more than that. Now, as a renegade, the Doctor had the chance to do that, to see all the worlds and all of the species he had heard about in the flesh. The freedom of the eternal open road - now that truly was something. There wasn't really a reason more complicated than that - did it need to be more complicated? Could it just be a simple reason like that? The irony wasn't lost on him that now Gallifrey was gone and the Time Lords were all dead he had all of the freedom he wanted; it was a literal case of being careful what you wished for. And what had he done with that freedom? He had lost friends, gained friends, lost them again...but he had sunk into some sort of depression, a dangerous depression at that. Perhaps it was better that he had spent time with them, had gotten to know with them. His mind went back to when he and Rose had landed on Krop Tor and had joked about going back and when he and Martha had wished Lazlo and Talulah a happy life together in 1930s Manhattan. He remembered when Donna and himself had tried to communicate across a room, him in a cleaner's trolley out the window and her looking through the window into the room, each of them mouthing and making little actions to try and convey what they were saying before Mrs Foster had seen them and they'd had to make a quick exit. And an even older memory of two little boys running through scarlet grass.   
  
" _Even if it was your fault, that's no reason to sink into a living hell because of it,_ " Sunshine finally concluded. Her voice was slightly lower now, although still heavily coated with the anger of before. When he was sure that she had finished the Time Lord looked up, his gaze crawling across the floor before dragging itself up to meet her (probably still angry) gaze. He held her gaze for a little while before he moistened his lips, his eyes dipping down to the floor again. "It was my fault," he said quietly. "My friends, everyone. Taking the TARDIS was before everything went wrong."Perhaps he was beginning to talk to Sunshine at cross purposes. He gave a weak smile. "'Better to go out with a bang'? I have a time machine, Sunshine. I could go back if I wanted to, change everything. Stop that bang. But I can't. There were rules." He shrugged, forgetting to keep talking of everything even vaguely Gallifreyan in the present tense. "When what do you suggest I do? Forget about them? Move on, onto the next one, and then when they get hurt just find someone else? Give me enough time and I'll work my way around the globe?" Despite the angry nature of his words the tone itself wasn't as angry as before. I can't travel with anyone else. I get them hurt or their families get hurt and then it's onto the next one.

* * *

That was it. That was the last straw, the complete and utter end to Sunshine's patience. Snapping her eyes open, she practically dove at the Doctor, stopping just short of him before drawing back her arm and landing a blow on his face. Not hard enough to do any serious damage, but probably hard enough to leave a bruise. Just a slap. "Shut up!" She was definitely screaming now, but more out of frustration than anger. "Just shut up for half a second and stop wallowing in self-pity! You are more than your mistakes, you are more than the people you have lost, you are A TIME LORD! If you think for one second all of your past companions would have wanted you sitting on the floor of your TARDIS being screamed at by some schoolteacher who carries knives wherever she goes because you were stupid enough to start thinking that you are only a sum of all of your mistakes and misdeeds, let me tell you, YOU ARE WRONG!"

Sunshine took a breath, still glaring at him. "You think that I don't understand anything you're going through? You think that I haven't lost things and people I care about? My mother died when I was seven years old and I wasn't allowed to speak at my dinner table! I watched my best friend get SHOT in the head because I didn't make sure she was covered properly! My other two friends died when I wasn't watching and my little sister died because I couldn't pay her medical bills! I got some kind of reward for being in a war, I got a hollow trophy that might as well say 'Good job, you killed people and watched more be killed! I got a courtcase shoved in my face at age twenty two because I didn't obey the rules of some twisted drill sergeant! I am just as guilty as you are, but I would not be myself if I didn't go through all that crap. I would not be as strong as I am now if I had given up, and you... oh, you are so, so old, you have licked your wounds for too long!"

Another breath. Sunshine's eyes felt went and her throat was starting to feel raw. "My uncle taught me how to fight, how to pick myself up off the ground, he taught me to bare my teeth in a warning smile to show that I can and will clamp down on your throat with these teeth if I have to, and he taught me that I am more than my misdeeds, I am not a sum of my broken and bruised parts, I am something made of all the things that keep me going, and I am sure as hell you have a lot more going for you than I do. So stop complaining and blaming yourself and accept that you, however powerful you may be, and however many chances you have to fix that bang, that you CANNOT change what happened then."

Was she overreacting? Maybe a little. But she saw parts of herself in the Doctor. War-stricken parts. Parts that had lost friends. 

And if he was collapsing like this, she was afraid she would too. And there was no way in hell she was letting that happen. 

 


	27. intermission, part 5.

As the Doctor had been speaking he hadn't been looking at Sunshine for the most part, too ashamed to raise his eyes to meet her gaze for long. If he had perhaps he would have seen more than just anger there, instead a silent fury only just - just held in check. He missed the clenching and unclenching of the schoolteacher's fists as he kept talking, missed the tightened jaw and the way Sunshine's eyes were squeezed together in an earnest attempt to control her fury at is words; he was too far away to see any of that, his eyes seeing instead of the gentle orange glow of the TARDIS the view from a hill overlooking the city of New New York, the view from Shakespeare's theatre, what he had seen when standing up high and watching the Empress of the Racnoss and her children be consumed by water and fire and flames. Perhaps if he had been looking at Sunshine the words he was saying would have died in his throat, never to be spoken; maybe he would have shut up, would've listened to the sound of himself.   
  
But he didn't and the next thing he knew Sunshine was flying towards him. Hang on, had he missed something? Completely caught unawares at such an attack the Doctor tried to back up in alarm only to find himself pinned by the TARDIS console behind him - literally caught between a rock and a hard place with nowhere else to go. Before he could do anything or even attempt to defend himself in any way, shape or form a blow came flying towards his face and hit him squarely on the cheek, making him crumple, with a grunt, against the underside of the central console. For a second or two he just sat there, just a little bit dazed as his face throbbed. " _Shut up!_ " Sunshine was screaming, her tone worn ragged by frustration. The Doctor lifted one hand woozily to feel his face. The pain wasn't too bad but enough to leave a bruise, certainly. He looked up at Sunshine, alarm clear on his features. Where had all of this come from? " _Just shut up for half a second and stop wallowing in self pity!_ " Sunshine was saying furiously. "You are more than your mistakes, you are more than the people you have lost, you are A TIMELORD!" She was properly screaming now and the Doctor didn't attempt to move, instead staying exactly where he was; his face throbbed uncomfortably though he didn't move to do anything about it. " _If you think for one second all of your past companions would have wanted you sitting on the floor of your TARDIS being screamed at by some schoolteacher who carries knives wherever she goes -_ " the Doctor just remembered this and eyed Sunshine warily, not taking his eyes off her for an instant in case she suddenly remembered the existence of her own knife as well and decided to go the full hog and use it " _\- because you were stupid enough to start thinking that you are only the sum of all your mistakes and misdeeds, let me tell you, YOU ARE WRONG!_ "   
  
She paused for a moment or two but the Doctor didn't speak, instead, again, made mute. Plus there was the risk of him being slapped again. Whenever he was slapped it was always by humans, he reflected, part of his brain still curiously removed from the situation. Perhaps there was a part of their DNA, hidden in reams and reams of biological code, that told them to instinctively slap every Time Lord they saw. Sunshine was still glaring at him. "You think that I don't understand anything you're going through," she asked him, before continuing on. Bits of her life were coming to light now; the Doctor had no choice but to listen to her as she went on, talking about how her mother had died when she was seven years old and how her friends had died around her. It was more than that, though - Sunshine, who had never looked more like the antithesis of her own namesake, had lost her sibling and how she had to go through a law case because, like the Doctor had originally speculated, she had refused to go along with what a sergeant had told her to do. " _I am just as guilty as you are,_ " she was saying, " _But I wouldn't be myself,_ " Her words hardly floated by the Doctor - they were as much of a physical assault as the slap. " _You are so, so old, you have licked your wounds for too long!_ " The curse of the Time Lords. The Doctor often felt that the Gallifreyans had lived for too long. Perhaps here was the proof; perhaps that was why the humans, or the humans he knew, we're always slapping Time Lords. Maybe the Time Lords needed the odd slap now and then. Sunshine was talking about her uncle now. "He taught me that I am more than my misdeeds, I am not a sum of my broken and bruised parts....so stop complaining and accept that you, however powerful you may be, and whoever many chances you have to fix that bang, that you cannot change what happened then."  
  
The Doctor wasn't sure if Sunshine was going to continue to talk and eyed her warily for a few seconds. Once it was clear that she had finally stopped her tirade he coughed, weakly pushing himself up a bit from where he lay, half sitting up and half lying down against the underside of the console, to a more comfortable position. "I can't change what happened then," he repeated, almost as if he was confirming it. For better or for worse, he couldn't change what happened then. He couldn't, and perhaps the Doctor had to have learnt the hard way as to how to accept that fact in himself. He looked at Sunshine, his cheek already turning a bit red from the earlier slap. "Are you happy now?" he asked, looking at her solidly and not blinking, not once. "As you said, none of them," he said, referring to his former companions, young and old, 'Would have wanted this to happen." Is this what he had become? A lonely traveller - the Lonely God that the Face of Boe's legends had addressed him as, the loner that he had told himself he would never become? How far had he fallen?

* * *

Sunshine let out a little sigh of relief, tilting her head back to look at the ceiling once more. "It'll have to do." She mumbled, turning her head back to the Doctor, resting her elbows on her crossed legs. Gently rubbing her hands over her eyes, she took a moment to decide what to say next.

"Are you ready to stop drowning yourself in your own self-pity, or do I need to hit you again? Because I will." Sunshine muttered, her voice quiet and slightly muffled by her hand, which was covering half her face. Screaming made her tired, it made her throat raw and it made her want to just go somewhere and read a book or sleep or pet a cat or do ANYTHING that she could do that was quiet. Did she feel even remotely guilty about hitting and screaming at the Doctor? No, not really. Not even 'not really,' just NO, she didn't feel bad about it at all. The Doctor needed to get out of whatever rut of self-loathing he had put himself in, even if it was a sudden thing, and if how he got out was by Sunshine slugging him in the jaw, so be it. Sunshine had been in that pit for a while, about two years. She didn't do a whole lot during that time, just kind of... continually did things, set herself a routine for the day and followed it to the letter out of pure want to do nothing. Wake up, eat, read until lunch, occasionally eat if she felt like getting up, spend time with the dog, sleep, repeat.

Always repeat, until her brother got frustrated with her doing nothing and introduced her to something new to do, like croquet or gave her a new book. Forced her to go on dates, forced her to talk to her friends. She didn't think it beneficial at the time, to be forced to spend time with other people, she thought it hellish, but now she... she guessed it actually helped now. Being forced to talk to people forced her to come up with things to say, forced her to make plans, forced her to drag herself out of that rut of self-loathing she had dumped herself in. Her brother kept her on her feet for the most part, shared with the rest of her family, kept her from just staying in bed all day and doing literally nothing. She continued doing that broken, horrible, monotonous routine of her everyday life until her uncle brought up teaching. She started out as a nurse's assistant, where every cut on a child's arm, every scraped knee reminded her of bullets tearing through flesh until she managed to see them as what they were, injuries she needed to heal. Then a substitute teacher, where she actually got to spend time with children, then teacher, where she could let her mind fill with addition and grammar and vocab and multiplication instead of war and sadness and blood.

"Because if you're ready to actually get on your feet and listen to me, I do hope you know I am not going to let you leave without me, however much you desire that. I'm not risking the chance of you going to the ice cream capital of the world to be sad and mopey and NOT get any ice cream because you were sad and mopey." Sunshine's lips showed a hint of a smile as she slowly removed her hand from her face so she could look at the Doctor.

 


	28. the ship, part 1.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the ship arrives.

Sunshine was cooling down now and his words seemed to be getting through to her as she had stopped shouting now, although he could tell that their collective three hearts - her one and his two - were probably all still racing from the altercation, him from being hit and being shouted at and her for....well, doing all of the hitting and slapping. Silence reigned for a short time as the two of them stared out in various directions. Sunshine was looking up at the ceiling although she soon turned to the Doctor, resting her eyes on him. " _It'll have to do,_ " she said quietly, which the Doctor took for being an acceptance of what he had previously said. One hand moved to his suit, trying to smooth it over from where it had gotten a bit creased when he had thudded against the underside of the console. "Good," he murmured, too tired to move from where he was. It was only the morning and he had in fact slept an hour, which was sufficient for Time Lords to keep going when they had to, but but he had been working for some time and the emotional stress added to the work he had been doing on the TARDIS for hours wasn't helping his energy levels much. He slumped against the console, staring out past the TARDIS doors into the garage beyond as Sunshine rubbed her hands over her eyes, apparently just as tired as he was. " _Are you ready to stop drowning yourself in self pity, or do I need to hit you again?_ " she asked now, her words slightly muffled." _Because I will._ " The Doctor glanced over to her. "No need to. Think I've, uh, met my quota for the day." The joke was weaker than it should have been but the Doctor didn't say anything else as the TARDIS continued to hum around the pair of them, her gentle noises, that had filled the background of his life since he had stolen her and taken her for his own, soothing him, calming him and his troubled thoughts.   
  
He hadn't expected Sunshine to be so forward, to be honest. She had been forceful before of course but he had hoped that his little outburst would shut her up, would stop her asking about what had happened before and why he was determined not to travel with anyone else, why he had inflicted that rule upon himself. She had been a little touchy before but surely she wouldn't go so far as to keep prying into something, keep talking about something, that he very clearly didn't want to talk about. He had had no particular need or want to talk about painful memories that had happened before and he had just wanted to be alone...as kind as Sunshine had been in lending him the use of her brother's garage she had been just another person who ran the risk of being hurt by being associated with him. So many had been associated with him and so many had died and he had been determined to put a stop to that. But rather than leaving him be in his misery she had outright fought against him - had taken it as something serious enough to argue with him about, to even hit him about. He wasn't sure how to feel about that, that she had taken his problems as her own. He was leaving, he was an alien, they had just met yesterday - but yet she still didn't want him thinking like that. Perhaps it was because she herself had felt like that....whatever the reason, she had interfered when she hadn't necessarily needed to. Sure, it had been a way that was pretty forceful, by shouting at him, hitting him out of pure frustration and screaming at him so much that she probably needed a pack of Strepsils, but she hadn't wanted him feeling like that. She got him out of the rut despite not even knowing him that well. It resonated.   
  
Perhaps that was why when Sunshine spoke again he was clearly of a different mind. "Ice cream capital of the universe," he corrected, although a hint of a smile teased at his features and he gave a shrug. "Sure, don't mind having someone to tag along," he said mock-nonchalantly, as though he was merely taking Sunshine for a trip to the chippy. "Just one trip," he said then, waggling his finger at her. "Just one trip. And back. But yes,"he added, his stern nature disappearing as quickly as it had come, "You can come." It was a reward for her for helping him and perhaps a thank you, too - not just for lending the garage and being okay about the car but perhaps showing something to himself about his own nature which he had allowed to grow in his mind like a collection of weeds. He had grown into something that he wasn't and Sunshine had knocked it out of him - literally as well as metaphorically. That deserved a trip to the ice cream capital of the universe....and somehow it was good to be able to travel with someone again. He felt like he needed it. He wasn't expecting the Daleks to come after him quickly and considering he'd just get her an ice-cream and maybe he'd get her a souvenir it wasn't like she was going to be around for long. He'd go there, give her a bit of an experience, come back and then lie low somewhere else. That amount of whizzing around and messing about with timelines would probably confuse the Daleks more than just lying low and staying in one place and give him more time to get away so it really worked out well for both of them now he thought about it - it was good for both of them. And who was to say that the Daleks were still following him? They could have given up by now and the more he thought about it the more he thought they might have done. It wasn't like they just had him to worry about; the Daleks he had been followed by were from another time period far in the future when they had more on their plates -   
  
\- But just as he thought that, he heard the sound of engines. Engines that weren't meant to be from here - engines from another world. From another time. As soon as he heard them the Doctor sat upright and got up, his eyes wide again with alarm. No. Not here. How could they have found him so quickly? They should have been here in a few days, not now. How could they be here? "No, no no no no no," he said, quickly getting up. He was speaking to himself mostly, his eyes upwards to the ceiling of the TARDIS. Beyond the TARDIS ceiling, beyond the house's roof...they were there. He could hear them. Not a big enough spaceship to be a mothership - probably just a small patrol squad, looking for him. And they'd found him. They'd found him alright. But how? He thought quickly. They didn't have much time - they'd be here shortly. Sunshine would be in danger....his eyes moved towards her. "Sunshine, stay right here. Don't move. Don't attract attention. Don't make a sound. They want me - I'll keep them occupied." He was already walking out of the TARDIS doors. "The Daleks," he said, not remembering that Sunshine would have no clue what Daleks were, and hopefully wouldn't ever, "Won't seize the TARDIS as long as they have me. When the doors are closed nothing can get in. Only when I'm gone do you open the doors, do you understand?" If she didn't understand she was dead. The Daleks wanted him, not Sunshine.

* * *

" _No need to. Think I've, uh, met my quota for the day._ " Sunshine felt a small smile tugging at her lips, despite the tired and weak tone of the half-hearted joke. The kind of joke where you try to make a joke out of something completely sincere and probably pretty serious. Her brother had made a lot of that kind of joke in his life, she knew.

"Sorry for hitting you, by the way." Sunshine said after about thirty seconds of silence, the majority of which she used to listen to the TARDIS. Now that she thought about it, the machine made a soft humming noise. Well, then again, everything made a sort of humming noise when everything was silent. A sort of earthy buzz of unconquered life. Wind in trees, breath, footsteps, various animal noises were things that people never really heard, they just kind of absorbed them. If they all stopped, there was still that strange noise that Sunshine thought was probably either just ringing in her ears or just the background noise to the rest of the world. She learned a while ago, when she was a child, that if you sat in an empty car, completely silent, you could hear that weird humming, ringing noise. She would sit for hours at a time in a car or a small, quiet room, listening to the silence of the world. It was almost comforting. But in the TARDIS, it could never be REALLY silent - there was an actual hum coming from her, not some ringing in empty space that Sunshine listened to so often.

" _Ice cream capital of the universe._ " Sunshine blinked once to clear her head and directed her attention to the Doctor. "Oh, excuse me. Ice cream capital of the UNIVERSE." She snickered, moving her hand so she was resting her chin on it. " _Sure, don't mind having someone to tag along._ " There it was. This was probably the one moment Sunshine would allow herself to be undignified, as she split into a half-smug, half-excited grin and clapped her hands, not really listening to anything after that. "Yes! Yes, I won, if that was something I could win!" Sun spent the next minute grinning and tapping the tips of her fingers together as she rocked back and forth in excitement. She felt properly ecstatic now, probably the same feeling she got when first seeing the TARDIS interior, if not more. The grin she had on her face was pretty close to that big, important smile, but she had already wasted that and it wouldn't be making an appearance anytime soon.

She did, however, stop grinning as she heard the same thing the Doctor heard - engines. Judging by his expression, probably not good engines, so she followed his example in getting up before he spoke again, his voice full of urgency. " _Sunshine, stay right here. Don't move. Don't attract attention. Don't make a sound. They want me - I'll keep them occupied._ " Sunshine took a moment to respond, her face slowly becoming less excited and more panicked. "What do you mean 'occupied?' I mean, I'll stay here, but-" She was cut off by the Doctor speaking again, this time about something called 'Daleks,' and then once more before Sunshine could respond. " _Won't seize the TARDIS as long as they have me. When the doors are closed nothing can get in. Only when I'm gone do you open the doors, do you understand?_ " Sunshine barely took any time to process this, by now her brain was whirring at full speed trying to figure out what he was saying. "Right, so what, I just sit in here and do nothing with the doors locked while you go... what, get yourself killed or captured or whatever?" She sounded less panicked and more slightly agitated by this, though there was obviously still panic and fear and confusion in her voice.

 


	29. the ship, part 2.

Sunshine had gotten excited by the prospect of going to outer space - she was practically rocking backwards and forwards, a grin on her face that the Doctor recognised as one that he had on his gob whenever he saw anything truly magnificent in the universe. It was the smile when you knew you were only going to see something once so you better enjoy it now - a smile that told anyone watching you that you were absolutely captivated by something, couldn't be drawn away by something. He could see it on Sunshine's face now and he was beginning to learn that she only smiled occasionally - but when she did, she really went for it. A smile tugged at the Doctor's own face as he watched her. It was a thank you, he supposed; a thank you in the best way he knew how. Just a quick trip, it was going to be, nothing huge, but it would still mean the world for Sunshine regardless and he thought he would leave her with that lasting memory. Even if she didn't encounter anything alien again (which was unlikely considering how the Earth tended to attract aliens) then she'd still have had some sort of experience, something that she could remember. It was unlikely that they would ever meet again, anyway. Might as well give her a reason to remember him, one more reason bar smashing her car which didn't exactly great in reputation terms.   
  
But the Daleks meant that couldn't happen. It would never happen if Sunshine were to die now, were to be exterminated by the Daleks. The Doctor knew enough about them and had met them enough times to know that she was unnecessary - they only wanted him and if they saw her then they'd just kill her because she was there. End of. To the Daleks that was justice and they would enact it the moment they saw her. He looked towards Sunshine who was getting slowly but surely more panicked. She didn't know the Daleks but yet she was still scared and the Time Lord didn't blame her. He could still hear the engines overhead. It would only be a matter of time before they started sending down one of the soldiers to come deal with him. It would be better if he went out to see them first. "Yes, you stay here," the Doctor said firmly. "It's a long story - my friends - we had to get out of the crucible - this spaceship -" He was aware he wasn't making the greatest amount of sense. "Look, they caught a trace of me and have been wanting revenge ever since. There's a chance that they might not kill me on sight. Might get me to stand for trial and then I can talk my way out of it."   
  
Or at least that was what he thought he'd be able to do. They may well kill him on sight as well considering that he had blown up the crucible andmight just have killed their leader (which, again, was not something the Doctor would have termed as being 'great' if we were talking about reputation)....but they might also get him to the Dalek parliament or something similar to stand for trial. Then they'd kill him. But before they had a chance to do that he'd be able to pull something to his advantage. He'd have to, to escape alive, to be frank. Either way, the Daleks would have gotten a new leader after Davros died and the Supreme Dalek had been killed off and maybe he could speak with this special Dalek. He had to take that chance. It wasn't like he had any choice. "If I don't come out now then they'll raze everything to the ground. They'll kill you on sight." The Doctor was by the doors now and was fiddling with them, pulling both of them shut. Just as he was about to close the secondary door he poked his head round it. "The TARDIS will keep you safe. I'm going to sonic the doors just for extra precautions." If he died then the door would unlock because he was a part of the TARDIS circuit. When he had been unwell during Christmas 2006 or so after his regeneration the TARDIS translation system didn't work; with him dead she would be able to override the unlock. Even without the sonic lock, though, the TARDIS was the safest place for Sunshine. He wasn't going to have someone else die on him.

* * *

Sunshine didn't do well in life-or-death situations. She also didn't do particularly well with being given orders. When she was being given orders in a life-or-death situation, most times she teetered on the edge of flipping out or just curling up in a corner somewhere. She just couldn't handle it - probably because the war had left her too scared of this sort of thing. She was usually already conducting a plan in her brain about how to get out of whatever situation she had put herself in, but now, now she was dealing with something that she knew nothing about.

She didn't know if whether the... Dalek things had weaknesses or not, and if they did, what weaknesses they did, all she knew was that the Doctor was about to do something that was probably heroic to the point of INCREDIBLE idiocy and whatever the Dalek things were wanted him and they might kill Sunshine. Not a whole lot of information for Sunshine to go on, but she was absolutely panicking now, there was no questioning that, so it didn't matter. She was bouncing up and down on her toes in impatience or fear, she didn't know which, absentmindedly clutching at her hair. Sunshine was barely listening to the Doctor at this point, she was still instinctively trying to formulate a plan in her head out of the bits and pieces of information she had, which wasn't a whole lot.

" _Yes, you stay here._ " Everything after that sounded like mindless static, though bits and pieces of words like 'revenge' and 'kill me on sight' were slipping through as she desperately tried to come up with a solution that probably didn't exist.

"Kill me on sight, alright. What's gonna happen to you, what're you gonna do? What do they use as weapons? Do you know if anything can deflect those weapons? Do they have any weaknesses? What the hell kind of trial do aliens have? If they want to kill you anyway, there's no way they'll give you a trial, that's common sense, and even if they do, it won't be a fair trial...." Sunshine's soldier brain was starting to kick in, she had stopped bouncing and clutching at her hair and was now pacing back and forth, running her hands over her head as she spoke at a mile a minute. What would an alien use as a weapon? Could they deflect it? Could it bore through metal? Did the Doctor have any suits of armor, no, that wouldn't help at all.. Sunshine's soldier brain was pretty efficient at coming up with solutions to battle-related problems, such as how to deflect weapons, but she also had to stress a lot about something and that every-man-for-himself side of soldiers came into play, too, so she usually was only good at strategic plans when it came to things like... this. 

 


	30. the ship, part 3.

Sunshine clearly wasn't coping well and the Doctor lingered in the doorway, not wanting to leave her when she was panicked. Not only was it not great for her to panic but if she got panicky and pressed buttons on the TARDIS or something - well, he didn't know what she'd do when she was under pressure - then they'd have a million more problems on their hands, or rather on the Doctor's hands. She had to stay here, however much she disliked it. The Daleks didn't like his companions in the first place and only usually tolerated them because they knew that if they shot one of his friends then their situation would be a lot worse but the last time he had seen the Daleks he had been the one in control. Well, he had been Davros' playtoy in the bottom of the Crucible and trapped in a prison beam that he wasn't able to get out of but he had been the one in control. He had been confident. Plus there had been two of them then which made things a little easier to be honest. Now the Daleks were angry with him and although he was sure that he was still feared by them, their hate for him would win out against their fear and he wasn't willing to bet that they would tolerate a human or someone who, in short, they didn't need. They only needed the Doctor and everyone else was irrelevant. Sunshine would die and he wasn't allowing that to happen. She would stay here regardless if she liked it or not.   
  
But she was willing to put up a fight. Sometimes he liked that side to Sunshine - he had liked it when she had shown him how there was more to life than his failures. Maybe then it had been good. Now, on the other hand, it most definitely wasn't. " _Kill me on sight, alright. What's gonna happen to you, what're you gonna do? What do they use as weapons?_ " She kept talking after that but the Doctor spoke over her, talking loudly over her where he stood just outside the TARDIS doors with his head peeking in. She had to understand that this was not what she was used to. These were not normal soldiers. She wouldn't stand a chance. "Sunshine, don't. The Daleks have special shielding - no guns can penetrate the shielding. At least no earthly ones." His eyes moved to the ceiling where the Daleks had to be waiting for him. "They'll put me on trial in front of the leader of the Daleks. It won't be a fair trial but I can talk my way out of it - if I can. If I don't come to them they'll try and find me and that's when people will die." He had to get it in her head that nothing was going to work - no active resistance anyway. He'd have to talk his way out of this one."They're the people my people were fighting, Sunshine. These are old enemies of mine. Trust me when I say they will kill everything non-Dalek." He muttered lowly, "I've seen it."   
  
That was when he heard it - the grating voice that he always feared hearing just as much as the Daleks feared his, no matter which body he had. The voice of a Dalek on some sort of speakerphone so it was broadcasted over the area. " _DOK-TOR!_ " The Doctor looked up. The voice was shriller than normal; the Dalek in charge of this patrol squad was evidently happy to have found him. "Looks like they know I'm here." He looked towards Sunshine, a weak grin on his face. "Maybe this patrol squad will get a pay rise."

* * *

Sunshine stopped pacing, stopped trying to tear out her hair. She slowly turned and faced the Doctor, letting her hands drop to her sides. She looked vulnerable for once in her life, standing there and staring at the Doctor as he spoke, though her mind was still working towards a solution. Something in the TARDIS, they could use, maybe? Sunshine wasn't sure what she should do, but she did know that she couldn't leave the Doctor out there to DIE or anything else, she had to at least try to do something.

"What am I supposed to do?" Her voice was breaking now, wavering and completely devoid of any of the confidence or even panic it had held before. "What am I supposed to do?" She repeated, still completely motionless.

"Just sit here in the TARDIS and do nothing while you go off on some heroic kamikaze quest or whatever? Isn't there something in here, in the TARDIS, a book or something on weaknesses or anything -" Sunshine cut herself off, a sudden spark coming into her eye. Raising her eyebrows, she briefly looked around.

"Doctor. Doctor, we're in a SPACESHIP. A REPAIRED spaceship that just HAPPENS to be able to go anywhere. Isn't it a plausible answer to say that we could... I don't know how this thing works, we'll say ARRIVE, arrive somewhere away from the big, horrifying CRUCIBLE SPACESHIP and at least buy ourselves some time?" She said after a small pause, her words coming out of her mouth too fast for her to actually make sense of anything she was saying. "Or is the only solution still a kamikaze death mission into an alien spaceship?" The small spark of hope in her previous statement died in this one, like she had still been processing the Doctor's insistence that there was nothing she could do and the reality of that insistence had just set in.

She looked vulnerable again, voice still breaking, but most of all, she looked SCARED. Sunshine didn't scare really easily, but this... this was certainly something to be scared of, a giant death spaceship forcing someone to come aboard or something to be murdered or.... was there something worse than murder? Torture? Sunshine wasn't sure, but regardless, she was now pretty sure the Doctor was going to say no, they couldn't get away in the TARDIS and there was, in fact, nothing Sunshine could do about it. Even the horrible attempt at humor and the weak grin didn't help Sunshine at all - if anything, it made her worrying worse. Like he was just setting in stone that he was accepting whatever fate this lead him to and there was nothing Sunshine could do about it. Sunshine never cried, never ever unless someone had died or if she was reliving the war, but she could hear her voice breaking and there was nothing she could do about it, really, except for hope that her tough exterior didn't give way to the life-or-death situation at hand here. 

 


	31. the ship, part 4

Sunshine was as scared as he felt - though he was trying his best to hide it. The Daleks scared him. Of course they did. They had been in his people's folklore for years, and when the war came....he had fought in that war. He had seen people been gunned down by the Daleks during that war. Not just people - children. Innocents. But if he didn't come aboard....well, what were the options? They'd just gun down every human being they saw until they came out. The Daleks weren't just hateful beings, they were clever hateful beings, and they knew that the Doctor wouldn't be able to stand the needless bloodshed. They were counting on it and the Doctor knew that as well as they did, that he wouldn't be able to stand the killing for long. He would have to go and see them - and then what? Presumably the Daleks would want to gloat over their prize so they wouldn't kill him instantly; they'd probably take him to their leader, whoever that was now that Davros and the Supreme Dalek were dead. He'd be given a 'trial', where, of course, he probably would stand no chance to defend himself, and then...extermination, he assumed. Maybe a bit of torture as well added in just before the extermination: the Daleks weren't ones to just kill their enemies, oh no. Or that was the plan. The Dalek plan, that was, not his own. His own plan went along the same lines although surprisingly enough it didn't end in extermination and ended in him doing something incredibly clever and escaping and then finding some way to get back to this time to pick up the TARDIS and get Sunshine. It was a bit of a stretch of a plan, but weren't they always? He'd find a way out. He always did. The Daleks scared him but they could never win. They couldn't and they shouldn't ever win and perhaps it was this that stopped him from loosing faith when it came to the Daleks, his oldest and greatest enemy.   
  
Or that was what he was telling himself as Sunshine went on, getting more and more panicked by the second. " _What am I supposed to do?_ " she was asking, over and over again. She was terrified but there was nothing he could do about it. The Daleks spelt death on anyone who met them. His only choice had been to hide her. " _Just sit here in the TARDIS and do nothing while you go off on some heroic kamikaze quest or whatever?_ "

 "Do you want to get killed?" the Doctor retorted angrily, knowing that the Daleks were going to be keeping an eye on the time and therefore so must he. But now Sunshine was thinking about something and she had cut herself off, looking around. "Doctor," she said, and at first the Doctor was going to irritably ask her what she wanted, but then she went on and the words died in his throat. " _Doctor, we're in a SPACESHIP. A REPAIRED spaceship that just HAPPENS to be able to go anywhere. Isn't it a plausible answer to say that we could... I don't know how this thing works, we'll say ARRIVE, arrive somewhere away from the big, horrifying CRUCIBLE SPACESHIP and at least buy ourselves some time?_ " She speaking fast, the words tumbling out of her mouth at the speed of light. The Doctor thought about this, running it through his head just as fast as Sunshine had been relaying the plan. Maybe they could do it - but they'd have to do it in a certain way, otherwise the Daleks would continue massacring people here for a bit....they'd have to give them a hint, a tip as to where they had gone, enough for them to follow. If they didn't then they were practically lining up people to die as the Daleks would do this in the Doctor's absence and would just wait for him to come back, knowing, again, that the Time Lord would never let a massacre happen. Not another one, anyway.   
  
" _Or is the only solution still a kamikaze death mission into an alien spaceship?_ " Sunshine's words cut through the Doctor's thoughts. He looked up at her, the beginnings of a plan forming in his head, a plan that didn't even involve boarding the ship. "Apparently not," he said, before coming into the TARDIS and shutting the door behind him. He hurried towards the console, narrowly missing tripping over the toast plate that was still by the console. "If I give them a chase," he said to Sunshine as he began to throw levers and push buttons on the console, "Leave traces as to where we're going, then they might not kill anyone here. They might want to try to give me a chase again. They chased me before and they won't want to lose me this time." He looked over to Sunshine, his two hearts hammering in his chest. "I can choose to meet them on a planet of my own terms. A deserted one, where people can't get hurt." He settled a few dials. "If we leave traces to stop them from killing people here then it does mean that we may only be able to buy ourselves an hour, tops. I would've said differently yesterday but the Daleks can trace me quicker now and I don't know why so an hour's all we've got." Why were they able to get a hold on the TARDIS quicker than usual, anyway? It was weird and something that he'd have to ask them when they were all aiming their guns at him. "It'll be risky." The Doctor looked to Sunshine, his hand on the final lever that would mean they flew off. "They might think me prize enough as a captive to chase after me. On the other hand they could stay here and keep killing people, intending to lure me out that way. It's a gamble." Running away was always risky - that was why he never did it. But maybe it could work, just this time.

* * *

"Do you want to get killed?" Sunshine literally did flinch at this, at his angry tone, just at the words he said. She hadn't flinched before when he snapped at her, but as stated before, Sunshine was panicking. She tried desperately to shut herself away from what the Doctor had just said, tried to shut herself away from the noise of the engines, from the horrible, grating voices, from everything and everyone, to return to that silent, close-doored, humming, ringing car that she considered her safe space as a child, to return to the silence of her childhood bedroom, to return to her uncle's side as he taught her how to break someone's arm, how to put someone in a headlock.

Sunshine often returned to old memories when she got to that panicky state, that vulnerable state as if drowning herself in childhood memories could somehow remedy the panic clouding her brain, her thoughts. Sunshine always returned to those childhood memories, standing in the corner of her own bedroom as a child, trying desperately to picture the room as it was, staring at the smudged, forgotten faces of what her family looked like at dinner, senior prom, learning how to ride a bike, cutting her knee climbing a tree, she remembered them as faded, smudged images, puzzled and jumbled with forgetfulness.

First day of high school, grandma's funeral, mom's funeral, little sister's funeral, friend's funeral, so many funerals, finally beating her brother at chess, Fan's face when she turned seven, bless her short-lived life, smudged and jumbled, a puzzle she did to entertain Fan, who had been four at the time, beating her uncle in a sparring match, drafted to the army, blood, too much blood - Sunshine didn't know why she was trying to sink herself in these memories, the engine was still painfully loud and the Doctor was saying something now - why was he in the TARDIS again? - slightly muffled, grating voices, why was the Doctor inside again? Sunshine forcefully dragged herself away from memories and turned back to the Doctor, who was saying something now,

Sunshine should have been paying more attention. " _I can choose to meet them on a planet of my own terms. A deserted one, where people can't get hurt. If we leave traces to stop them from killing people here then it does mean that we may only be able to buy ourselves an hour, tops. I would've said differently yesterday but the Daleks can trace me quicker now and I don't know why so an hour's all we've got._ " Right. Had Sunshine won that argument of getting him back in? She was still partially focused on her memories, she was interested in them now, mom's voice, barely recognizable, reading Good Night, Moon at bedtime, looking up at the luminescent, cheap, plastic, glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling as she began falling asleep - " _They might think me prize enough as a captive to chase after me. On the other hand they could stay here and keep killing people, intending to lure me out that way. It's a gamble._ " Sunshine fully dragged herself away from her memories, turning away from the door and to the control panel where the Doctor now stood. "It's worth it, though, I assume?" She said after a moment of processing what he had said.

 


	32. the ship, part 5.

The Doctor regretted his outburst as soon as he said it - Sunshine didn't appreciate it one bit and she even flinched a bit at it, something that he had never seen her do. She never flinched at anything; he could hardly believe, in fact, that this was the same person who had hit him earlier and who had been shouting at her earlier. It was as though she had been switched within a blink of an eye to someone who was panicky, who was breaking down right in front of him, someone who flinched at a harsh word. The Doctor couldn't help feeling a little ashamed for having been so harsh on her, looking at her now with her flinchy nature and her panicked state. He paused by the console and glanced up at her. "Sorry," he said awkwardly, offering her a small smile. He couldn't really say anything else and he couldn't really comfort her - they were up against Daleks and he had tried to protect her by not mentioning at first what had chased him but now that the secret was out and now that the Daleks were definitely after him it wasn't like he could just make her forget about them. She had been drawn into his world now and there wasn't much he could do about it - and he was determined to keep her safe and the TARDIS was the safest place for her. Perhaps now she was beginning to see why people near him got hurt.   
  
"It's worth it, though, I assume?" the Doctor was still by the lever. The lever that could make them move to the nearest deserted planet, or the lever that could just as easily stay where it was and make him go up to the Dalek patrol ship. He had a feeling that this choice he could never go back on. He paused for a moment or two. "If it saves lives," he said finally, before launching the ship into flight. Almost immediately the TARDIS was in flight, moving towards the first deserted planet it could find. The Doctor didn't care which - just a place where people couldn't get hurt. He supposed it was better this way as he rarely got the chance to dictate where he got to talk to the Daleks as they usually came to him but part of him kept wondering as to whether it would work. It was a huge gamble and, of course, it all rested on whether they'd follow his trail and leave Earth in peace in pursuit of him..surely they would, given there had to be a bounty on his head for his supposed 'crimes' during the Stealing of the Worlds. He didn't think of it as a crime to kill Davros and the Supreme Dalek but the Daleks certainly did....and they wanted justice. This was a test, in truth, how much they wanted that justice. The flight through space was easier this time because he had repaired the TARDIS; although he still had to cling onto the console to ensure that he didn't fling off into the railing like Sunshine had. He glanced towards her, hoping she was holding on. And holding on generally, in fact, given that she was as scared as he was.   
  
At last they landed. The Doctor clung onto the console for a few moments after they landed, feeling the gravity of what he had done on his shoulders. He could have led the Daleks in a merry chase...or he could have left them to wreak havoc on planet Earth. He had no idea what they would do. Surely their sense of justice and their hatred of him would make them come but even so he couldn't predict their actions. To do so would make him a Dalek, in truth. If the Daleks really hadn't wanted to chase him or were more preoccupied with trying to smoke him out by hurting the human race, the species that the Doctor was fond of, then they could be doing anything back there. By the time the Doctor realised that they weren't coming then he couldn't cross his own timeline and would be forced to land on Earth and just see what he found, and given how quickly the Daleks could work and how the TARDIS sometimes landed a few months or weeks out of whack with the time he had intended to land then anything could have happened and it would have been all his fault. It was, really, a gamble that the Doctor couldn't afford to lose.   
  
"We're on the planet Kal 5," he said at last. "Out there it's deserted. No people. No aliens. Nothing. It was one of the first planets to fall during the war." He had heard of Kal 5 when the war had been beginning, when it had been in it's infancy. It was before the idea of entire planets dying became commonplace, before you heard of planets dying over your breakfast. It had been a shock then. Everything had been a shock. Not anymore."If the Daleks are coming they'll follow within the hour." They could prepare now, as much as you could do with the Daleks. But first he needed to deal with Sunshine. The Time Lord, recovering from the flight, walked over to where she was. "Everything's going to be fine," he said gently. "I've met them before. Countless times. And I'm still here." Plenty of people aren't, though.

* * *

Sunshine's mind was distant for the whole trip there. She sat numbly on the floor, clinging to the railing. Her mind was focusing on old memories. Old poetry, from the first and last poetry show she had ever gone to. Mostly because her poetry was terrible.

A crowd of 4 clapping echoed in her ears, faded and interrupted by the Doctor's voice. " _We're on the planet Kal 5. Out there it's deserted. No people. No aliens. Nothing. It was one of the first planets to fall during the war._ " Sunshine blinked and nodded a little as he continued talking. He said 'everything's going to be fine' in that tone one used to comfort a child that was scared of monsters under the bed. "Okay. What do we do in the meantime?" Sunshine said after a pause.

Sunshine was, decidedly, very scared of the monsters under the bed as she stood on shaky legs. There were - were super soldiers out there, with impenetrable armor. She felt a little outmatched. Like this was a little unfairly weighted. Hell, she had just wanted ice cream. Did this happen to everyone who wanted ice cream with the Doctor? 

Was this what he went through on a daily basis? Sunshine swallowed at the thought. This was like war, but weirder, and worse. There were soldiers, and there was still a threat of death, but..... this time, this time it was worse. She didn't have friends here. She was on an empty planet. It was her and a stranger she had met two days ago, and an enemy that greatly outmatched the two of them, an enemy she knew nothing about. It was two against what she assumed to be thousands of fearless, homicidal super soldiers. 

It was war, but worse. She was unarmed, outnumbered, and severely in the dark. But hey, the Doctor knew what he was doing. If he could do it, maybe she could, too. 

 

 


	33. the ship, part 6.

Sunshine was a little quiet and the Doctor didn't blame her for that. Suddenly they had gone from eating toast to having a fight to having Daleks, aliens from other worlds, chasing them. It was an understatement to say that the situation had suddenly escalated. He was only doing alright because of two things - firstly, the fact he was actually used to this, and secondly, the other fact that he had responsibility here. Sunshine was an adult, the Doctor knew that, but she had suddenly been tossed into a world that she didn't understand and that understanding could have gotten her dead. It still could, in fact. The Doctor always felt a duty of care towards his companions and Sunshine wasn't even a companion, just someone who had been helping him out and whose world had been expanded just by chance. For all the Doctor knew the TARDIS could have fallen through the sky onto the top of a building in Hull that specialised in advertising and then the events of the past day would have gone along a very, very different track. But they had landed on her car and now, for better or for worse, she was his responsibility. She hadn't asked for this and even if she had the Time Lord wasn't going to be letting her take responsibility even for a second.   
  
Besides, there was always that niggling sense at the back of his mind. It was a small one but one that he had always had since he had started travelling - the sense that even though Sunshine was indeed an adult like he had observed earlier her age, as a Time Lord (or Lady, in this case) would make her only a child. Time Lords, and Ladies, only were able to say they were young adults when they were around 90 or so; Sunshine, if she had been born on Gallifrey, would still be considered a child now, and a very young one at that. The Doctor knew as well as anyone that humans aged differently to Time Lords - of course he knew that - and he had been around humans long enough to sufficiently recognise the fact that if the woman before him had indeed been born in Gallifrey then she probably would have been 700 or so, maybe 600 at the youngest....but even so it was still a habit that he couldn't shake. It was the same with the humans, really; he had been addressed as 'old man' several times and in the humans' perspective he guessed he was an old man. By Gallifreyan standards he was in his 40s, maybe late 40s if he didn't mind treading on his self esteem and the natural vanity that came with this regeneration a little, but of course it didn't seem that way from the humans' perspective. It was all about perspective in the end.   
  
Regardless, he had a duty to protect her and that was what he would do. He also didn't want the Earth getting hurt, of course, so here they were, trying to lure the Daleks away. As Sunshine asked him what they were going to do in the meantime, the Doctor ruffled his hair with one hand as he thought. "No weapons, for one thing," he said. "I never fight with weapons and besides," he said, glancing at Sunshine, "If we were to bear arms then we'd be technically at war with them and they'd just shoot us down. Probably, ideally, they'd want me alive, but the Daleks were never ones for critical thinking and if we got out there with guns then that would be us finished. I don't carry arms on the TARDIS anyway." Maybe he did; he couldn't remember. Either way there was no armoury or anything of that sort; the only guns he had were probably in Storehouse 9 and would take a while to get to. Despite whether guns were available to them or not, the Doctor had only been a soldier once and he had no desire to be a soldier again."But I might as well tell you who we're going to be talking to. As much as I would prefer it that you never saw a Dalek if I'm right, and I honestly hope I am, then we'll be seeing a small patrol squad turning up any minute now.

* * *

" _No weapons, for one thing. I never fight with weapons and besides, if we were to bear arms then we'd be technically at war with them and they'd just shoot us down. Probably, ideally, they'd want me alive, but the Daleks were never ones for critical thinking and if we got out there with guns then that would be us finished. I don't carry arms on the TARDIS anyway._ " Sunshine nodded slowly to whatever he was saying, even if she was a little confused as to what the Doctor was saying. For instance, Sunshine still didn't quite know what a 'Dalek' was, other than they were pursuing Sunshine and the Doctor and they were aliens, but maybe that was all she needed to know. Right now it didn't seem like the time to be outspoken or as questions like she might ordinarily. Like she might ordinarily, if she wasn't in immediate danger of quite possibly dying.

"Got it. No weapons, hope they want you alive. Am I still going to stay in here or do I get to go out there with you?" Sunshine said after a minute of thought, finally giving into the urge to ask at least one question - it couldn't hurt to ask just one, right? Well, then again, Sunshine commonly got in trouble for asking too many questions. She had already done that once today and ended up punching the Doctor. Letting her eyes flicker to his jaw, she sighed a little internally at the sight of the bruise that was forming from her fist. She had definitely let her temper get the best of her that time and she regretted it a little now. She didn't regret telling him off, but she did regret hitting him in the jaw. Punches to the jaw were never pleasant, especially when they bruised afterwards.

" _But I might as well tell you who we're going to be talking to. As much as I would prefer it that you never saw a Dalek if I'm right, and I honestly hope I am, then we'll be seeing a small patrol squad turning up any minute now._ " Sunshine perked up a little at the word 'we're.' That meant she was coming along. In Sunshine's personal opinion, regardless of the fact it would be putting herself in immediate danger, it would be neat to meet another alien species, regardless of how.... bloodthirsty they might be. Plus, Sunshine had developed something of a taste for dangerous situations, and feeling adrenaline in her veins made her... excited, very excited.

"Wait a second, why did the.... Dalek things get to you so fast? You said you had a few days at least, not somewhere around twelve hours, which is when they actually came." Sunshine said after a moment of hesitating, a puzzled look crossing her face. After all, why would somebody lie about something so serious, (assuming that the Doctor did lie about that,) something that could potentially save or end your life. Unless, of course, the Doctor didn't know about it, didn't know why or how the Daleks found him so fast, which now that Sunshine thought about it, was an even more terrifying possibility.

 


	34. the ship, part 7.

As the Doctor had been talking Sunshine had been nodding along with what he had to say, though he could tell she was still a tad confused. Confused was better than upset or panicking, though. Perhaps learning more about who they were going to be meeting and who would be turning up trying to kill them both in a few minutes' time would calm Sunshine down a little more, he speculated. He had seen her earlier with all of her questions about the Dalek armour and so on and so forth - she seemed calmed by information and that was what he was going to give to her if it helped her calm down. The Daleks were scary - he knew that and so did she. Anyone who ever met a Dalek would agree and if they didn't it was because they were too stupid to recognise the most basic of primal instincts: to run away. It was impossible not to be scared by a Dalek, really, with their merciless artificial lenses staring at you and the shrill voice which was enough alone to inspire a deep sense of fear in anyone a Dalek met. But if she was able to understand, in the few minutes until they came, maybe it would make things better for her, would take away some of the misunderstanding which had to, at this point, be grating on her nerves - after all, she had been tossed into a world she didn't know anything about and from what he had seen of Sunshine she liked answers. To not have any must have been infuriating for her. Maybe, with some new information to hand, she would be able to face them a bit better.   
  
" _Got it. No weapons, hope they want you alive. Am I still going to stay in here or do I get to go out there with you?_ " Speaking of 'face'....well, he hadn't really decided on whether Sunshine was to come with or not. On one hand if she didn't come with him then whatever happened she would be safe in the TARDIS - the TARDIS was practically impregnable, or she was when she was alive anyway. On the other, however, she could come in useful and if she were discovered by the Daleks or the TARDIS was captured then she would still be in danger whether he wanted it or not. If he died then she would be forced to stick inside the TARDIS....and although the TARDIS, on a practical note, had a kitchen alongside other essentials, if the Doctor died then so would the TARDIS and so even if the TARDIS would have otherwise stepped in to fly Sun home she would be in the process of dying and so would be unable to help her. Sunshine would be stuck, either on Kal 5, a deserted planet wrecked by war, for the rest of her life or on the Dalek ship, where the TARDIS would be battered all day long and eventually, when the TARDIS did finally die, would be open to the Daleks if the Daleks hadn't chucked the TARDIS into another pool of Z-Neutrino energy like they had tried to do on the Crucible before that point.   
  
Either way Sunshine would die and neither option was very good realistically. The more the Doctor thought about it the more that, although he was reluctant to say it, it appeared that Sunshine would be better off with him than in the TARDIS. His very nature strained against it considering all that had become before but neither option was a good one - and if something was to happen to him then Sun's quality of life, if he were to think about it that way, would be practically nonexistent, far at home and hidden in a dying spaceship with Daleks that could appear any moment. "You get," the Doctor said, a little unwillingly, "To go out there with me. They know that I will refuse to cooperate if anything happens to you and there is a chance - " as unlikely as it seemed " - that they may want to keep you alive just to ensure I cooperate." After he had undertaken a trial or whatever the Daleks thought of as justice, though, Sunshine's future may be as bleak as it may have been if she had stayed on the TARDIS. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, though. "But you don't provoke them. If you do that goes out of the window and you're worth nothing to them."   
  
Sunshine's eyes had flickered to his jaw and the Doctor felt it with his hand, wincing a little at the bruise that was probably forming there. "Wait a second," Sunshine said then. " _Why did the...Dalek things,_ " she asked, the word probably unfamiliar on her tongue, " _Get to you so fast? You said you had a few days at least, not somewhere around twelve hours, which is when they actually came._ " Well, that was the thing. It had been worrying the Doctor like a niggle at the back of his mind and the fact that Sunshine had noticed it as well was worrying. The Time Lord extended a hand on one of the coral structures dotted around the TARDIS interior and leant on it, allowing the structure to support his weight. "I don't know," he said, looking for once as flummoxed as Sunshine was. "They should've taken a few days. I know the Daleks - maybe when the New Empire had been around it would've taken about twelve hours but that's not around anymore." The New Dalek Empire was in shatters. "My friends and I, we took the New Empire down, which is what they think I should pay for now. Now they're just survivors in the corners of the universe. Obviously banding together, of course, but even so they're in tatters. They shouldn't have the technology to grab a hold on the TARDIS like that. An ordinary ship, maybe, but not the TARDIS." That was Time Lord technology for you; incredibly hard to get a hold of both literally and metaphorically. The Doctor supposed that he had to be thankful that the Daleks were only going after him and not his friends, but who was giving them the technology? "It'll be something to ask them when they come."

* * *

" _You get to go out there with me. They know that I will refuse to cooperate if anything happens to you and there is a chance -_ " Sunshine grinned a little, despite the situation. Back in battle, she supposed, though not with a bitter tone this time. No, this time it was more exciting than deadly, though it was still quite a dangerous and life-threatening situation. In fact, Sunshine finally concluded that this was probably more dangerous than the battles she had already been in, but this time there was that certain excitement factor to it, whereas before it had been exhausting to the point of Sunshine getting BORED before and during combat. No, this time she was certain there was going to be no boredom. Only excitement and the feeling that she was probably about to die horribly. Good combo, she decided. " _\- that they may want to keep you alive just to ensure I cooperate._ "

Sunshine started paying attention once again as soon as the Doctor finished his sentence, raising her eyebrows. Sun might be kept alive to ensure the Doctor cooperated? What did that mean? Was she to be used as a hostage, a pawn in this ordeal? Sunshine couldn't help but feel a little affronted by this remark, though it was enough to shake off. This wasn't war, of course, only a battle close enough to be such (the Doctor said his people had been fighting these things for years, after all,) but war left rarely left potential hostages untouched. Why Sunshine would be a potential hostage, she wasn't sure. She certainly couldn't hold any value to the Doctor, could she? After all, she had only met him yesterday, and so far their relationship was riddled with arguments or even brief skirmishes. The Doctor couldn't possibly hold any attachment to Sun, sentimental or protective.

" _T_ _hey should've taken a few days. I know the Daleks - maybe when the New Empire had been around it would've taken about twelve hours but that's not around anymore. My friends and I, we took the New Empire down, which is what they think I should pay for now. Now they're just survivors in the corners of the universe. Obviously banding together, of course, but even so they're in tatters. They shouldn't have the technology to grab a hold on the TARDIS like that. An ordinary ship, maybe, but not the TARDIS._ " Sunshine frowned at this, the puzzled look returning to her face, though less out of bewilderment and more out of thought. "It'll be something to ask them when they come." Sunshine shrugged. "I suppose. How long do we have now? You know, until the Daleks come." The word was becoming easier to say, easier to use without having to think. As much as the Doctor seemed to hate them, the word was nice. Fun to say, really, Sunshine silently thought. Da-lek.

Shaking her head a little to clear her thoughts, Sunshine stuck her hands in her pockets and thought for a few more moments. "In percentage, what's the chance of getting out of this situation alive? Both of us, that is. Not just me or you, both of us, what's the chance of that?"

 

 


	35. the ship, chapter 7.

That could have gone down better, the Doctor reflected as he saw Sunshine's raised eyebrows at his comment about cooperation. It was true - although the Doctor would hardly say that Sunshine was a companion (she had fed him toast and allowed him to use her brother's garage, for goodness' sake) he still felt a duty of care towards anyone he travelled with, being the most knowledgable about the two of them concerning travelling among the stars. He had thought about this all before but the fact that he felt like he had a duty of care still counted. He wouldn't let anyone die on his watch. She couldn't stay in the TARDIS anyway, that he had already concluded - so where else was she going to go? Go hide in Kal 5 among the smoking ruins, the old scars of a war that had started and ended thousands of years before she was born? The Daleks would discover her at once so she had to stay with him....and he knew that the only way of her staying alive was if she seemed to be an asset to the Daleks. They had tried to make him cooperate before by kidnapping his companions - he remembered Rose and the way she had been kidnapped at the beginning of the Battle of the Game Station and Rose again at the Battle of Canary Wharf - and that was the only way, he could see, that she would be able to stay alive. The Daleks weren't as scared of him as before, they were actively hunting him down, so they weren't going to keep Sunshine safe simply because he wanted her to remain so: there had to be a reason for her living in their eyes and the only way of persuading them to not kill her seemed to be by making her an incentive for him not to escape or to try anything funny. Of course, he would, and he would get both of them out...but it was all about what the Daleks saw. Sunshine would realise that sooner or later.   
  
She had been listening as he had been talking and he could tell that she was thinking it all over before she shrugged. " _I suppose,_ " she said. " _How long do we have now? You know, until the Daleks come._ " The Doctor clicked his tongue as he thought, turning his eyes to the TARDIS ceiling. Well, it really depended on whether the Daleks had thought that the Time Lord was enough to lure them away from Earth, though if they assumed that....he ran a few calculations in his head, making up the figures that he didn't know and trying to make a rough estimate. If he assumed that they were only in a patrol ship...."Hard to tell, really," he began to say before Sunshine spoke again after another few moments of thinking it all over. There it was - the soldier mind that the Doctor had thought was there all the time. She may have been a soldier for only a short time but once you were a soldier there was always a part of you that was still a soldier, wherever you went on from there. He knew it himself; perhaps that was why he could see it so well in Sunshine. He had seen it before when she had been thinking about what they could use against a Dalek and he saw it again now. There was an analytical piece of her that he was seeing now, not the scared part of her from before. She was keeping that under wraps. _"In percentage, what's the chance of getting out of the situation alive?_ " she asked. " _Both of us, that is. Not just me or you, both of us, what's the chance of that?_ "   
  
The Doctor was going to reply, or try to, when once again he heard the sound of engines and he was saved from trying to answer her questions. His eyes moved to the TARDIS doors. So they had taken the bait - well, the only thing he could think of was that they were clearly eager to get their hands on him. Hands? Suckers. Whatever. He looked towards Sunshine, his expression serious. "Looks like we have company," he said, not answering her question directly and standing up from where he had been leaning against one of the TARDIS coral structures. His hand went to his suit, brushing it down and straightening it. He couldn't hear anything from outside the TARDIS but it was only going to be a matter of time. He walked towards the TARDIS doors. The windows didn't loan themselves to being seen through - they were fake anyway, just a part of the broken down chameleon circuit - but he wasn't sure he would've liked what he saw anyway. He could imagine it well enough. Whatever he saw a Dalek it was too soon. The Doctor looked towards Sunshine. "Time to say hello to the neighbours." He opened one of the TARDIS doors, leaving it ever so slightly ajar as he stepped through onto the dusty, grey world that lay beyond.  
  
Kal 5 was a ghost town. A ghost planet, even. Ash had been drizzled liberally over the grey ground, the Doctor's footprints left clearly for anyone to see in his wake. Above, in the skies, there were grey clouds. The TARDIS had landed in what looked like a wasteland although the Doctor knew that, once upon a time, this could've been a street - a motorway - anything, but definitely not a wasteland. In the early years of the war this had been the result of many of the battlegrounds. Kal 5 was one of the early ones to fall; later on the planets would be completely destroyed. But Kal 5 had been lucky...or unlucky. It was hard to see whether it had been better for the planet to be completely destroyed or for it to be left a wasteland, to be frank, as the Doctor came out of the TARDIS and glanced around. It reminded him of Skaro, the Daleks' home planet. Unlike Gallifrey Skaro was still where it had always hung in the sky, although even before the Time War it had been ruined by the war between the Kaleds and the Thals. Most of its wildlife were long gone and as far as he knew the Daleks themselves found it hard to survive on their own planet, something that could be thought as pretty ironic, especially since Skaro, in the Daleks' language, meant home. He always got some dark humour from that....it made the fact that Gallifrey was gone easier to bear, that even though the Daleks had survived, albeit as insane hybrids, they found it hard to live on their own planet. Made his own loss easier to swallow.   
  
And there were the Daleks now. Only a small group of them - five or six in this patrol group, their ship parked next to them. Unlike some of the Daleks within the Vault they looked like normal Daleks - bar, of course, their casings. The metallic bronze of their armour seemed a stark contrast to the world of grey but there were chips in their armour, like they had been hit by shrapnel. None of it had ruptured the casing, of course, the Doctor hadn't expected that, but these Daleks at least had been through the wars. They swivelled their eyestalks towards him when they heard him open the doors and watched him now, the blue beams of their eyes following his movements as he got out of the TARDIS. " _IT IS THE DOK-TOR!_ " their leader, the one at the front, screamed, the lights at the top of his head flashing in time to the rhythmic element to his voice. "That's me," the Time Lord replied casually, his tone at odds with his feelings.

* * *

" _Hard to tell, really._ "

The words sunk into Sunshine, instilling a sudden sense of dread. She never liked to wait around for something like this - it only made her more and more nervous as she slowly thought about what would happen when she died. Though she didn't know about other soldiers, Sunshine's experience with war and combat had left her with a feeling that if there was some sort of "higher power" or a god or ANYTHING, it had just stopped caring, or maybe just didn't exist in the first place. Kind of an empty and sad opinion, of course, but that left Sunshine still questioning what would happen if she would happen to die here, in this situation. The first question, of course, would be how on EARTH would they explain it back home if she died here, on Kal 5? Back at home, to the kids at school, to her brother? Unless the Doctor brought her body back home, which probably wouldn't look very good for him, there would be no way to explain it. Maybe she would be put in one of the MISSING ads. The second question was what WOULD happen once she died? Would she just... cease existing? What would that be like? Reincarnation seemed like the most safe and not terrifying prospect of many, of course. Being born again as another person wouldn't be too bad, she guessed, but Sunshine still preferred not to dwell on these topics for too long. Luckily, she was saved from her own thoughts by the sound of engines - engines, she recognized, that belonged to the Daleks. It really was an awful noise, though not quite as horrible as the Doctor's TARDIS, or maybe equally horrible, just on another level.

" _Time to say hello to the neighbours._ " Sunshine raised her eyebrows a little, smiling. A small attempt at humor at this time was impressive, even for the Doctor, who over the short time Sunshine had known him, was very good at making jokes at very bad times. As he stepped out of the Tardis, Sunshine hesitated for a moment before following him and closing the door very gently. The ground here was soaked in ash, absolutely DRENCHED with it. Sunshine wasn't sure that she wanted to know what the ash was made of, however old it was, as she stepped delicately in the grey flakes. Like snow, she thought, like snow, only worse. Snow that was quite possibly made out of long-burnt bodies and streets and houses. Sunshine shuddered a little at this thought, pulling the thin jacket she had on closer around her and running to catch up with the Doctor. That was around the time that she saw them, the Daleks and the ship. It took her a little to take them in - they certainly were... strange-looking, to be fair. Big metal, bumpy things with what almost looked like periscopes with a blue light on them. Sunshine almost laughed a little, and probably with good reason - the Daleks, however deadly, did look a little silly, especially in the small group they were in. By now, Sunshine was right beside the Doctor, and the Dalek was speaking.

" _IT IS THE DOK-TOR!_ " Sunshine flinched a little at this - it was an awful noise, them talking. Much worse than any spaceship engines that she had heard so far, even if that was only two. Two was more than most people, after all. Most people would (hopefully) hear none - Sunshine was, after all, just starting to realize the situation she had put herself in. It was the middle of what looked like a long-set grudge, and she had little to no place in this battle. Little to no place only meant that there was POTENTIAL for her to be used as a hostage, which in most respects was not the most glamorous part of battle, if there even was a glamorous side to any battle. 

 


	36. the ship, chapter 8.

Sunshine was right next to the Doctor but he didn't glance at her, not once, his eyes instead fixed on the Daleks ahead of them. The Daleks were arranged in a V with the point where the two lines met where the leader was; he could feel it's cold blue eyes looking at him and so he looked back, staring into the deep blue abyss which lay there. Somewhere in that casing, he knew, a small mutant lay, covered in it's own slime and operating the tin bucket that it was encased in, imprisoned in. By thinking about it that way you could almost feel sorry for it, how it was forced to operate a life support system and would never see the world except in a blue tinged lens. But you would only feel sorry for it if you didn't know how many the Daleks had captured, enslaved, tortured and killed; would only feel sorry for it if you had no clue about how merciless the creature inside that shell really was. For many people those blue eyes were the last things they would ever see....and only the Eternals knew how many people those Daleks would go on to kill unless he stopped the whole thing right now. Right now, in fact. So he looked into the Daleks' eyes just as they were looking back at him, his jaw set and his features firm. Despite his casual tones there was hate in his eyes, almost as much as the Daleks' hate; if he had seen it in himself he would have been terrified.   
  
" _THE DOK-TOR WILL COME TO THE SECOND CRUCIBLE._ " "The second crucible?" the Doctor echoed, before whistling a low note. "Not that you lot have illusions of grandeur or anything. What's the second crucible? Another piece of space junk from the Medusa Cascade?" It wasn't like it was going to be as fantastic as the first Crucible had been. Now that had been quite something to be honest - sure, he had seen the Vault part of it most of the time where only Davros and Caan had been kept but it had been one heck of a ship. The second crucible was hardly going to be as spectacular as that ship had been - it was going to be a slightly larger patrol ship probably, one that had been far away from the crucible at the time checking up on the inhabitants of the Lost Moon of Poosh or Adipose 3 and keeping them in line when everything had been going down in the Crucible itself, at the eye of the storm. The explosion would have affected them but wouldn't have destroyed them outright which was how they had survived, he assumed. The Daleks always survive, he thought, suddenly made bitter. " _IT IS THE HEARTBEAT OF THE NEW EMPIRE. THE DOK-TOR WILL COME._ " The leader Dalek, the one at the front, swivelled it's eyestalk to look at Sunshine. It's eyestalk moved up and down as though it was looking her over. The middle part of the Dalek casing, with the sucker and the gun on it, swivelled round to point at her. " _THE FEMALE WILL BE EX-TER-MIN-ATED!_ " it screamed excitedly but, before it did anything, the Doctor stepped slightly in front of Sunshine, if she indeed hadn't gone back to the TARDIS to find cover or had moved herself. "No. She comes with me or I won't cooperate. I'll go back into the TARDIS and you won't ever be able to find me." The Time Lord gave the leader Dalek a strong look. "Your superiors won't be happy about that." 

Sunshine was keeping very still which was, the Doctor thought, probably the best thing she could do. Antagonising the Daleks was probably the worse thing you could do - the worst thing, in fact, you would ever do before you died. He did it, of course, he was always challenging them, but he didn't really think to go with the rules that he personally set up for other people and the Daleks thought him as something separate to the human race anyway, quite correctly given that he wasn't the same species as Sunshine or any of the humans back on planet Earth; most of the time they didn't want to kill him on sight (just torture him instead) and even if they did want to kill him the command wasn't going to be by some tiny little patrol ship. No: the leader of the Daleks, whoever that was now, would probably want to do that himself. So despite the fact he was challenging the Daleks he knew no harm would be likely to come to himself - he was worried about Sunshine, to be honest If the Daleks decided to go against him and kill her anyway there wasn't anything he could do. Nothing on Earth - nothing in the galaxy, in the universe - would be able to revive her once shot with a Dalek death ray. It did what it said on the tin, after all, make no mistake....and the Daleks were clearly the ones in control here. Although it was true that the Doctor could very well go back into the TARDIS and lead the Daleks on another merry chase that would be putting Sunshine at risk; however fast they physically got in the ship the Daleks would still have plenty of time to fire at them and if they saw he was trying to get away they'd probably try and shoot Sun anyway as an act of revenge. The cards were definitely not in the Doctor's favour but he still stared down the leader of the Daleks, his face grave as he still stood in front of Sunshine.   
  
Finally after what seemed like hours the Dalek's blue eye shrunk a little like it was withdrawing and the gun and the sucker both turned towards the Doctor again. " _THE FEMALE WILL COME,_ " it said grudgingly, as reluctantly as a mutant trapped in a metal shell could be reluctant. Well, thought the Doctor, Someone's been having a little chat with the higher-ups. Like Time Lords the Daleks had a telepathic system that meant that they could talk amongst each other - well, the Time Lords had thought it was telepathic but given that they were armed to the teeth with technology it might have been something more like a messaging service on a subwave network like the one that Harriet Jones had set up for him and his friends. The thought of her - and the way she had faced her death, bravely and armed just with her wits and her old ID card (even the Daleks had known who she was) - made the Doctor feel sick again, sick to the stomach. But if the Daleks had been talking and Sunshine was not being gunned down anytime soon then the Doctor was grateful. Although he couldn't do anything about the deaths of the past he could do, and indeed had done, something about the deaths of today. He glanced towards Sunshine just as she began to snicker a bit and gave her a sharp look. What was she doing? Surely she could see that they were soldiers, would kill her if they were given a chance...he shook his head at her minutely.  
  
Three Daleks from the patrol team came towards them - two going on either side of them and one going at the rear of the party. The other two Daleks stayed were they were, the commander of this patrol squad and the deputy clearly going to lead the way. If they had wanted to escape then they certainly didn't have any chance of that now - they'd have to get through the Daleks first. The only way was forward, or so it seemed - forward to the patrol ship. "Oh look, Sunshine," the Time Lord muttered, "We even have our own escort." If she didn't have an idea before about how much the Daleks disliked him but at the same time treated him a touch differently to the odd prisoner she would certainly have one now, or so the Doctor thought. The Dalek next to him, the one who was restricting him on the right hand side, turned to him, swivelling it's eyestalk in his direction and giving him an icy blue glare. "SILENCE!" it barked and the Doctor quietened down, almost able to taste the excitement in the air from the Daleks around him. The atmosphere was electric. Clearly this group of Daleks felt very happy to have found him - perhaps they would indeed get some sort of reward for finding him, he contemplated. Even if they didn't get a reward per se for having found the supposed 'Medusa Cascade Criminal' and for capturing him singlehandedly the fact that they had captured the Predator of the Daleks, the Bringer of Darkness and the Oncoming Storm would be a career highlight to put on their CVs. '

The Daleks began to move and the Doctor was forced to move with them - he'd have to unless he wanted to have the third Dalek, the one at the back, pushing him with it's sucker to get him to keep going. The ship wasn't too far away but clearly the Daleks didn't want any funny business. "So,"he said conversationally, "Who's this new leader of yours, then? Because Davros has popped his clogs, the Cult of Skaro's gone including Sec and bar Caan and Caan's dead and buried - no thanks to you," he said, sending the nearest Dalek a look, "He was the only decent one - and the Supreme Dalek was killed when the Crucible exploded. I saw it happen. So which lucky Dalek got the post?" The leader of the Dalek patrol squad didn't turn to him, instead trundling along towards the ship. They should have been able to teleport into it - maybe the teleport device had been hit during the explosion, the Doctor theorised. In which case they'd have to get into teleport range which he supposed was what they were doing now. " _THE SOVEREIGN DALEK RULES SUPREME,_ " it replied finally, it's lights flashing in time with it's speech. "The 'Sovereign' Dalek, hmm?" the Doctor replied. "You lot really were delving deep into the thesaurus. Running out of words to say 'in charge', are we?"

* * *

If a Dalek could sound somewhere along the lines of reluctant or maybe even bored, Sunshine later supposed that the Dalek that would soon be speaking had nailed that particular vocal expression to the best of its (probably limited) ability. " _THE FEMALE WILL COME._ " The Daleks' grating voices were becoming more familiar, less silly or amusing and more grounded. Like the word TARDIS, Sunshine was getting used to the, frankly awful, noise that was their voice, whereas before, everything had seemed a bit surreal, so to speak. Sunshine briefly wondered whether or not it was a result of the metal that she assumed to be a casing, or if it was just the way the Daleks spoke. Like a side effect of a casing versus just... an accent, it could be called. Though, of course, Sunshine wasn't sure if it was actually possible to have an 'accent' that made you sound like you were gargling gravel, but she supposed it wasn't to be unheard of, not now.

Sunshine looked back up at the Doctor and raised her eyebrows at his almost indiscernible head shake. Sunshine was quite adept at testing her luck, really, and she rather liked it, too. Sunshine was good at testing her luck, too, she never really got in trouble for it unless it was something serious. Then again, she didn't have the chance to do it much anymore - testing her luck was of two years ago, and she hadn't gotten away with it for once, and the whole thing escalated into a court-case for misconduct, so Sunshine learned her lesson. However, now, Sunshine was presented with an opportunity, a dangerous, horrible, probably life-threatening opportunity to test her luck, and there was no way in hell she wasn't going to take it. No guts, no glory. Sun thought once more, cracking a slight smile in the Doctor's direction. Sure, she might be about to die, but on the other hand, there was a very small chance that she might not die horribly, and Sunshine had a tendency to be usually very lucky.

" _Oh look, Sunshine, we even have our own escort._ " Sunshine glanced back up at the Doctor, cracking another little smile. "How exciting, it's like we're royalty." She whispered back, giving a small glance towards the Daleks that were now slowly steering them towards the ship. Well, she almost got to whisper that entire sentence, but only got about halfway through before the right-hand side Dalek insisted upon silence. Sunshine did fall silent after that, knowing that breaking that newly-enforced rule would definitely push her past the point of testing her luck and instead somewhere onto the territory of death as a definite probability.

"S _o, who's this new leader of yours, then? Because Davros has popped his clogs, the Cult of Skaro's gone including Sec and bar Caan and Caan's dead and buried - no thanks to you. He was the only decent one - and the Supreme Dalek was killed when the Crucible exploded. I saw it happen. So which lucky Dalek got the post?_ " Sunshine supposed that the Doctor would be able to talk more than she was in the first place - after all, she was probably no more than a hostage here, whereas the Doctor was... valuable, Sunshine supposed. Yes, valuable, Sunshine said to herself as the Dalek said something about a 'Sovereign Dalek,' which Sunshine supposed was who they were being taken to. " _You lot really were delving deep into the thesaurus. Running out of words to say 'in charge', are we?_ " Sunshine couldn't help but smile a little wider at this.

"If I could suggest managerial, or, maybe, oh, supervisory?" Sunshine murmured softly, raising her eyebrows and glancing at the Dalek closest to her. She had to admit, the metalwork was lovely. She would've liked to get a closer look at it, if getting a closer look didn't involve her getting murdered.

 


End file.
